BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) – President Biden’s announcement of a vaccine mandate has been met with resistance.
Two dozen Republican attorney generals, including Jeff Landry, are warning the White House that they will be pursuing legal action if mandates for the vaccine are passed.
“This is an egregious overreach of federal authority, and as we see what these rules are, we will be able to know exactly how we will be able to challenge them in court,” said Governor of Nebraska Pete Ricketts.
While there are still some unanswered questions about the proposed mandate, the mandate is being enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
OSHA is instituting an ETS, a special type of rulemaking authority allowable when it determines that workers are in danger because of a particular hazard and that an emergency standard is needed to protect them. The ETS goes into effect as soon as it is published in the federal register and essentially operates as an interim final rule with authority to bypass usual rulemaking processes.
Barring legal overturn, these rules will remain in effect until superseded by a permanent standard. The ETS is expected to go into effect within the next three to five weeks.
These vaccination requirements will cover 100 million workers, two-thirds of all workers. Louisiana falls under the jurisdiction of OSHA, according to the Baton Rouge Area Chamber with about 350 companies and nearly 56,000 employees to be impacted by the vaccine requirements in the capital region.
The vaccine requirement is an effort to curb the surge of COVID-19 and reach herd immunity.