Congress Didn’t Give OSHA Authority to Impose Vaccine Mandates |
By Doug Badger and Paul J. Larkin Jr. |
The Daily Signal |
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is about to require 80 million working Americans to get vaccinated. You may be among them.
There’s just one catch: OSHA lacks the legal authority to impose a vaccine mandate.
Declaring that his patience was “wearing thin” with unvaccinated Americans, President Joe Biden on Sept. 9 announced that OSHA would require companies with at least 100 employees to mandate that workers either get vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID-19 tests.
OSHA sent a draft mandate to the White House on Oct. 8. Once the White House completes its review, OSHA will issue the order.
And then get sued.
Badger and Larkin explain in a separate legal analysis that the courts will almost certainly strike down the OSHA vaccine mandate because, among other reasons:
- Congress did not place vaccines within OSHA’s purview. Congress has given neither OSHA nor the Labor Department authority over vaccines.
- While HHS has regulatory jurisdiction over vaccines, it has no power to impose a general vaccine mandate. If Congress had authorized a mandate, it would not have encrypted it and concealed it in an obscure subsection of the OSHA statute.
If Congress wants a general vaccine mandate, it must pass a law establishing one. The Biden administration does not have existing legal authority to impose a vaccine mandate via the “emergency temporary standard” it is attempting to use.