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The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 52 – 48 to overturn President Joe Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate for private businesses with more than 100 employees.
The vote came one day after a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Georgia, issued a 28-page ruling suspending the mandate nationwide.
Republican Senators seeking to overturn Biden’s mandate used a law called the Congressional Review Act (CRA) which allows Congress to overturn federal regulations and requires just a simple majority vote in both the Senate and House.
Two Democrats — Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) — joined all 50 Republicans in voting for the measure, which would ban the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from enforcing the mandate.
In a press conference before the vote, Senate Republicans said they believe there will be enough Democrats in the House of Representatives to get a vote, despite Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) claim that “we’re not going to go for their anti-vaxxing.”
If all Republican House members vote for the CRA, it would take five Democrat votes to approve.
However, even if the votes are there, Biden will likely veto the measure, according to Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who sponsored the CRA.
At the press conference, Hoeven said:
“We’re gonna pass this Congressional Review Act on a bipartisan basis in the Senate sending a very clear message, a very clear message, that this is an overreach by the Biden administration and we need to stop it. And I think in the House, there’s a very good chance that they will get enough people to sign on to this CRA to actually force a vote.
“Now, we understand that when that goes to the administration the president may well veto it, but we’ve sent a very clear bipartisan message on behalf of the people that this mandate needs to be stopped.”
If a majority of House members sign a discharge petition — used when the chair of a committee refuses to place a bill or resolution on the committee’s agenda — it would “force Pelosi’s hand … to require a floor vote,” The Hill reported.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who sponsored the CRA vote, said there will be “more civil disobedience” and legal battles if the mandate remains.
In a Nov. 4 press release, Braun said:
“I got to believe a few of them [Democrats] are going to say, ‘Wait. Do I want to buy into more of this craziness, or do I want to get reelected?’ So, it’ll put them all on record … If they decide to just toe the line, they’re going to be on the public record for those close Senate races in swing states in 2022.”
Manchin, the first Democrat to support the CRA, last week said:
“Let me be clear, I do not support any government vaccine mandate on private businesses. That’s why I have cosponsored and will strongly support a bill to overturn the federal government vaccine mandate for private businesses. I have long said we should incentivize, not penalize, private employers whose responsibility it is to protect their employees from COVID-19.”
This week, Tester said he’s “not crazy about mandates,” according to The Epoch Times. Prior to Biden’s mandate, issued in September, Tester’s home state of Montana passed a law barring public sector and private employers from discriminating based on vaccination status.
The law, which also protects the privacy of individual medical records, was signed in May by Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte.
Gianforte, who reaffirmed the law after Biden’s mandate was announced, stated in a November press release:
“Despite President Biden’s efforts to mandate vaccinations for employers and their employees, Montana law remains the law of the land, and no employer in our state should use President Biden’s OSHA rule, now halted by a federal court, as a basis for imposing illegal vaccination requirements on employees.”
Legal victories pile up for opponents of mandates
Biden’s mandate set a deadline for employees to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022.
However, OSHA was forced to suspend the mandate after a Nov. 12 ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which barred the agency from implementing the mandate pending judicial review.
OSHA said it “remains confident in its authority” to implement the Emergency Temporary Standard, and expects to do so “pending future developments in the litigation.”
Children’s Health Defense issued an “Urgent Call to Action” calling on all scientists, citizens and medical experts to ask OSHA to permanently end the ETS.
The legal fights continue with more wins this week for medical freedom.
In addition to winning Wednesday’s vote in the Senate and Tuesday’s ruling suspending employer mandates nationwide, opponents of COVID vaccine mandates have scored a series of other legal wins in recent days.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate for city employees was suspended on Tuesday pending a Dec. 14 hearing by Judge Frank P. Nervo of the New York Supreme Court, Newsweek reported.
According to U.S. News & World Report, Phoenix paused implementation Tuesday of a federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the 14,000 workers in the nation’s fifth largest city, just hours after a federal judge temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s administration from enforcing a mandate for those employed by federal contractors.
Also this week, South Carolina lawmakers advanced a proposal to ban COVID vaccine mandates for state and local government employees, contractors and public school students.
Under the proposal, school districts would not be able to require students to get the shots.
The draft bill would also bar private companies from suspending or firing employees who do not get the vaccine, though it does allow for those employers to require weekly testing to abide by any federal mandates.
The latest setbacks for Biden’s mandates follow two other key legal losses, including a Nov. 30 ruling by a federal judge in Louisiana who temporarily halted the mandates for healthcare workers nationwide, and a ruling by a U.S. district judge in Kentucky blocking Biden’s mandate for federal contractors in three states.
