Republican attorneys general from 21 states, including Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday saying that Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors is “on shaky legal ground,” and may create problems in the nation’s already critically damaged supply chain.
Under the mandate, a private business would be required to force its employees to be vaccinated for Covid-19 before it could be awarded a federal contract or have an existing contract with the federal government extended or renewed. President Biden issued the mandate in a Sept. 9 executive order, and contractors have until December to comply.
“President Biden’s attempt to force vaccinations is, at the root of it, unAmerican,” said Gov. Mike Dunleavy. “These mandates cause division at a time where we need to work together. Forced medical decisions are counterintuitive – destroying America’s sense of fairness and liberty. My administration will continue to fight against these mandates to protect the inherent individual rights of all Alaskans. Medical choice is an individual American freedom.”
“Our laws prohibit this type of action, which is overreaching and inconsistently applied,” Taylor said. “This order improperly tries to use the force of law to punish federal contractors for decisions that should be left to them and their employees. Fortunately, federal and state law prohibits these bully tactics.”
Shortly after the Sept. 9 announcement by Biden that he will require all federal employees and contractors to be vaccinated, 24 GOP attorneys general sent him a letter warning that his actions were “unlawful and harmful” and “disastrous and counterproductive.” They threatened they would block it in court. Wednesday’s letter was yet another reminder that the states have legal remedies, but was not a lawsuit.
The letter maintains that the contractor rule is ambiguous and inconsistent with other regulations and existing laws. There is confusion about whether businesses with existing federal contracts would be subject to the mandate and how broadly the requirement would be applied across companies. Biden overstepped his legal authority when he issued the order, Taylor said.
“Like other mandates being imposed by the federal government, this mandate stands on shaky legal ground, cannot be reconciled with other messaging provided by the government, and forces contractors unable to make sense of its many inconsistencies to require that their entire workforce be vaccinated on an unworkable timeline or face potential blacklisting by the federal government or loss of future federal contracts. We strongly urge you to instruct agencies to cease implementing the mandate or, at a minimum, to provide clarity to agencies and federal contractors across the country and delay the mandate’s compliance date,” the attorneys general wrote.
“As an initial matter, agencies that implement the mandate may have their actions found unlawful and set aside as arbitrary and capricious. Many aspects of the mandate, as set out in Executive Order 14042, ‘Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors,’ and the subsequent ‘Safer Federal Workforce Task Force Guidance for Federal Contractors and Subcontractors,’ are internally inconsistent and at odds with actions taken elsewhere by the government to combat COVID-19,” their letter says.
Under the guidance issued by the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, a “covered contractor employee” required to be vaccinated is any full-time or part-time employee “working on or in connection with a covered contract; or working at a covered contractor workplace.” The guidance defines employees working “in connection with a covered contract” as employees “who perform duties necessary to the performance of the covered contract, but who are not directly engaged in performing the specific work called for by the covered contract.”
That language appears to sweep in any employee with a tangential connection to a covered contract, even if that employee works remotely.
The attorneys general also questioned the logic for the mandate: “President Biden’s remarks in announcing the federal-contractor vaccine mandate highlight why the mandate is unnecessary. The President emphasized that ‘the vaccines provide very strong protection from severe illness from COVID-19 . . . [and] the world’s leading scientists confirm that if you’re fully vaccinated, your risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is very low.’ But the federal-contractor vaccine mandate seeks to protect the vaccinated—for whom the risk of severe illness is “very low”—from those who choose to remain unvaccinated. Not only is this reasoning illogical, but it is likely to increase skepticism about the vaccine in those who have chosen not to receive it.”
The attorneys said that implementing the mandate in the middle of a supply-chain crisis could have disastrous consequences in light of the approaching holiday season.
“As the Cargo Airline Association recently informed you, it will be ‘virtually impossible to have 100% of [the] respective work forces vaccinated by December 8.’ The ‘virtual impossibility’ of meeting this deadline is not unique to the cargo industry, and the inability of many contractors to guarantee compliance will have significant ramifications to the economy at large,” they said.
