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The courts have not been kind to President Joe Biden and his attempts to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, and now his administration has been hit again.
On Tuesday a federal judge took the side of South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in striking down a mandate that would require the employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated, News 2 Charleston reported.
“Abuse of power by the Biden administration has been stopped cold again. The rule of law has prevailed and liberty is protected. When the President oversteps his authority the law is thankfully there to halt his misuse of power,” the attorney general said.
The judge issued a preliminary injunction which prohibits the government from enforcing the mandate, which marks the third time federal judges have sided with the attorney general against the Biden administration on the mandate.
The case was brought by Attorney General Wilson and Governor Henry McMaster, along with attorneys general and governors of six other states including Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Utah, and West Virginia. Other state entities are also named as plaintiffs.
The lawsuit argues that the federal mandate, issued by President Biden on Sept. 9, is unconstitutional as it violates the Tenth Amendment, which grants states and the people powers that are not delegated by the Constitution to the federal government. It also calls into question the lack of exceptions for contractors that “work alone, outside, or even exclusively remotely.”
“A federal judge has again sided with Attorney General Alan Wilson and today blocked the vaccine requirement for federal contractors. This is the third time courts have agreed with Attorney General Wilson and blocked vaccine mandates imposed by the Biden administration,” the attorney general’s office said on Twitter.
“Doughty ruled on the lawsuit led by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and joined by 13 other states, but Doughty added a nationwide injunction in his ruling,” the news organization reported.
“If the separation of powers meant anything to the Constitutional framers, it meant that the three necessary ingredients to deprive a person of liberty or property – the power to make rules, to enforce them, and to judge their violations – could never fall into the same hands,” the judge said.
“If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by our Constitution would be in the same hands. If human nature and history teach anything, it is that civil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency,” he said.
“During a pandemic such as this one, it is even more important to safeguard the separation of powers set forth in our Constitution to avoid erosion of our liberties. Because the Plaintiff States have satisfied all four elements required for a preliminary injunction to issue, this Court has determined that a preliminary injunction should issue against the Government Defendants,” the judge said. “This matter will ultimately be decided by a higher court than this one. However, it is important to preserve the status quo in this case. The liberty interests of the unvaccinated require nothing less.”
“Therefore, the scope of this injunction will be nationwide, except for the states of Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, since these ten states are already under a preliminary injunction order dated November 29, 2021, out of the Eastern District of Missouri,” he said.
“This preliminary injunction shall remain in effect pending the final resolution of this case, or until further orders from this Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, or the United States Supreme Court,” he said.
