Twenty-four state Republican attorneys general are threatening the Biden administration with a lawsuit if it insists on implementing President Joe Biden's executive order effectively making companies with 100 or more employees require coronavirus vaccinations.
''President Biden's proposed vaccine mandate is nothing but an unconstitutional power grab,'' said Alan Wilson, South Carolina attorney general and chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association. ''We are a nation of laws, not men, yet the Biden administration has shown that it has no limiting principles.
''We are not a country that rules by edict and if President Biden's power grab goes unchecked, it will have dire consequences for our nation.''
The warning by the Republican AGs came in a letter Thursday addressed to the president.
''Your plan is disastrous and counterproductive,'' the letter reads. ''Your edict is also illegal.''
Biden announced a week ago that he was ordering the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to use its power under a 1970 law to devise a regulation, bypassing its own rulemaking process, and issue an emergency temporary standard or ETS to require the vaccinations. A typical workplace standard usually requires eight years to devise, The Associated Press reported.
The GOP AGs detail in their letter issuing an emergency temporary standard has been attempted nine times between 1971 and 1983 (and only once since then in June and is under challenge), six of which were challenged and only one of which was upheld by the courts.
A number of companies have instituted their own vaccine mandates.
Fox News, for example, offers ''privileges'' to staff who are vaccinated over those who are not, and also requires all unvaccinated employees to wear masks and distance themselves from all others at all times while working on-site.
Newsmax, by contrast, encourages all employees to be vaccinated and grants them paid time off to do so. But the company neither requires vaccination nor penalizes employees for not being vaccinated.
Federal judges have begun limiting government requirements on vaccine mandates.
A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked New York state officials from imposing a COVID-19 vaccine requirement on health care workers who claim the shot violates their religious beliefs.
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