BREAKING NEWS!! U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove on Tuesday blocked President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for some federal contractors.  In short, the federal judge found that Biden likely lacks the authority to impose such a mandate across the board saying in part: “The question presented here is narrow. Can the president use congressionally delegated authority to manage the federal procurement of goods and services to impose vaccines on the employees of federal contractors and subcontractors? In all likelihood, the answer to that question is no.”  As a result, Van Tatenhove granted a request for a preliminary injunction covering the three states that requested the stay – namely Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Biden signed an executive order in September that set-in motion a process that had OSHA take the lead on private sector businesses, with the assumption federal contractors could force all their workers to get a COVID-19 vaccine unless the worker is entitled to an exception based solely on the fact they were receiving federal dollars.  Any contractors who did not comply with the order, originally set with a Dec. 8 deadline, were poised to lose the government’s business.

The federal judge sited the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution while finding the three states arguments persuasive as they related to:  the vaccine mandate was both illegal and unconstitutional, in part because it was imposed with little regard to “important aspects surrounding the mandate, including but not limited to economic impacts, cost to States, cost to citizens, labor-force and supply-chain disruptions, the current risks of COVID-19, and basic distinctions among workers such as those with natural immunity to COVID-19 and those who work remotely or with limited in-person contacts, among other aspects.”