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Alabama Attorney General wins lawsuit blocking federal contractor vaccine mandate


Alabama Attorney General wins lawsuit blocking federal contractor vaccine mandate
Alabama Attorney General wins lawsuit blocking federal contractor vaccine mandate
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A federal judge has blocked the vaccine requirement for federal contractors.

Alabama’s Attorney General Steve Marshall joined six other states in this lawsuit.

Judge Stan Baker in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Georgia issued the ruling this afternoon.

Alabama’s Attorney General Steve Marshall says federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates for private companies, healthcare workers and now federal contractors have been blocked by federal courts.

“On all of those, we prevailed with a similar response to the federal courts, and that is that these actions are unlawful, they're unconstitutional. And this was a president who clearly exceeded his authority,” Marshall said.

Following the ruling for federal contractors, Tuesday Governor Kay Ivey said in a statement, “I’ll call the Biden vaccine mandate nonsense what it is: and that is an un-American, outrageous overreach. This morning, we had another win in our fight for freedom when a federal judge put a nationwide halt on the federal contractor mandate. Momentum is on our side.”

Marshall says Alabama federal contractors, healthcare organizations and private companies can now use these rulings to hire back terminated employees but each individual company can still require vaccinations with medical and religious exemptions.

“Our hope is that businesses will welcome those employees back because the ruling that we received today gives an opportunity for every business to have a reset,” Marshall said.

NBC 15 reached out to federal contractor, Airbus, about this court ruling and they said in a statement, “We continue to monitor this situation and its implications for Airbus in the U.S. There is no change to our policy or its timeline for implementation at this time.”

Marshall says nationally the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors impacted 25 percent of the workforce and even more when you add in healthcare workers and private companies.

Marshall says these rulings can be appealed.

“So the Department of Justice, whether they will eventually take it to the appellate court, the United States Supreme Court, but right now, these injunctions are the law of the land, and we feel very confident in our ability to defend what these judges have done, as well as ultimately prevail on the merits of litigation,” Marshall said.

NBC 15 also reached out to Austal but did not hear back at the time this story was published.


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