Judge Knocks Down Biden’s Federal Worker Vax Mandate

President Joe Biden hit yet another roadblock in his bid to raise vaccination rates across the country on Friday when a federal judge in Texas blocked enforcement of his federal worker vaccine mandate. The judge, Jeffrey Vincent Brown, ruled that the mandate reached beyond presidential authority, referencing a recent Supreme Court decision which blocked a vaccine mandate that was aimed at large businesses. “The President certainly possesses ‘broad statutory authority to regulate executive branch employment policies,’” Brown wrote. “But the Supreme Court has expressly held that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate is not an employment regulation. And that means the President was without statutory authority to issue the federal worker mandate.” Brown further clarified that the ruling was not a signal to people to not get vaccinated. Rather, he said, “the court believes they should [get vaccinated]” and that the rule was more informed by the question of “whether the President can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment.”