A federal appeals court in the United States has temporarily halted President Joe Biden’s administration’s mandate requiring large company employees to be vaccinated or subjected to frequent testing.
According to the mandate, employees of companies with 100 or more employees must be fully vaccinated by January 4, 2022, according to the Xinhua news agency.
Unvaccinated employees must submit weekly negative Covid-19 tests to enter the workplace after the deadline, and must begin wearing masks indoors on December 5.
Issued by three judges from the .S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the order reasoned that “there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate” and suspended the mandate “pending further action by this court”.
The court order came in response to a joint petition from several Republican-led states as well as several private companies opposing the mandate.
In response to the petition, Seema Nanda, the Labor Department’s top lawyer, stated on Friday that the department was “confident in its legal authority” to issue the mandate, which will be enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
OSHA has the authority “to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are subjected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them”. she said, adding the administration was “fully prepared to defend this standard in court”.
