The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined in a 2-1 vote that the vaccine mandate bans for federal contractors currently active in the states can continue to be implemented. The bans were implemented by the states as they argued that the proposed vaccination mandate proposed by President Joe Biden is unconstitutional and an overstep of his presidential duties.
“The plaintiff states have plausibly shown that the contractor mandate threatens to damage each of the states’ economies,” the judges wrote in their decision. “The states thus plausibly allege that resistance to the contractor mandate will result in layoffs, further supply-chain issues and rising prices, all to the detriment of their state economies. The states likely have a quasi-sovereign interest in defending their economies from the alleged negative ramifications of the contractor mandate. And, because the contractor mandate implicates these sovereign and quasi-sovereign interests, the states likely have standing to contest it.”
Republican Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who initially filed the suit, indicated his support for the decision in a statement emailed on Thursday.
“This ensures, while the case continues to proceed, that federal contractors in Kentucky aren’t subject to the Biden Administration’s unlawful mandate,” Cameron said.
Over 9,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in Kentucky on January 5, while Ohio reported over 19,000 in the past 24 hours. Around 14,000 cases were reported in Tennessee on January 4, according those states’ public health data websites.
Cameron said in a release last year that federal contractors accounted for about one-fifth of the country’s labor force and $9 billion in contracts in 2021.
This new ruling comes after a nationwide ban on the mandate for federal contractors was imposed by a federal judge in Georgia last month.
That mandate requiring employees of federal contractors to get vaccinated against COVID-19 had been set to take effect this week.
In his ruling in November, U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove wrote that “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.”
The recent ruling applies only to the three states. The Georgia judge’s order came in response to a lawsuit from several contractors and seven states. It applies across the U.S. because one of those challenging the order is the trade group Associated Builders and Contractors Inc., whose members do business nationwide.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
