A lawsuit to block the Biden Administration’s recent vaccine mandate for federal contractors has been filed by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, along with two other states, calling the president’s move “an unlawful executive order.”
The vaccine requirement, which says that federal contractors must get their shots by Jan.4, was pushed back from the original Dec. 8 deadline, and now matches the same date set for similar rules for large private companies and health-care providers.
Cameron, the attorneys general from Ohio and Tennessee as well as two county sheriffs from Ohio are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. In the complaint, the plaintiffs said they “seek judicial relief from the President’s unlawful and unconstitutional vaccine mandate.”
“The federal government contracts with private businesses and public agencies in states across the country, and the Commonwealth is no exception, meaning that numerous Kentuckians are subject to the Biden Administration’s unconstitutional vaccination requirement,” Cameron said in a press release. “We are taking the issue of federal overreach seriously and will protect the livelihoods of countless Kentuckians and Kentucky businesses from overbroad mandates.”
The Kentucky portion of the lawsuit, like Ohio’s, claims that several workers at county jails throughout the state would end their employment if the requirement stands, which, they said, will “exacerbate the current staffing challenges at these institutions and threaten public safety.”
When Louisville’s hospitals created vaccine mandates for staff, it seems to have had little impact on employment levels. At Norton Healthcare, 99% of employees were compliant a week after the mandate went into effect, according to Spectrum News 1. At UofL Health, fewer than five employees quit.
Across the country, other threats of mass employee walkouts over vaccine mandates have not panned out. In New York, police unions threatened that 10,000 officers would leave because of the mandate, but, a day after the mandate went into effect, only 34 had been placed on unpaid leave, according to the Washington Post.
The Biden Administration said on Thursday that the combined vaccine mandates cover about 100 million employees or about two-thirds of the U.S. workforce. The president was hesitant to incorporate hardline vaccine rules during the beginning of the vaccine rollout, but said it’s now necessary.
“While I would have much preferred that requirements not become necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good,” Biden said in a statement.
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