Judge Blocks Biden Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers

A federal judge Friday, January 21, 2022, blocked the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine requirement for federal employees, the latest legal setback for the president’s push to inoculate workers. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown in Texas said President Biden didn’t have the broad, unilateral authority to mandate "that all federal employees consent to vaccination against Covid-19 or lose their jobs.” The judge’s ruling said that the case wasn’t about whether people should be vaccinated. “It is instead about whether the President can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment,” Judge Brown wrote. “That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.” The Supreme Court last week blocked the administration’s Covid-19 vaccine-or-testing rules for large private employers. The high court, however, did allow the administration to impose a vaccine mandate for more than 10 million healthcare workers whose facilities participate in Medicare and Medicaid. The Justice Department said it was filing an appeal. White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted that 98% of federal workers are vaccinated and referred additional questions to the Justice Department. “Obviously we are confident in our legal authority here,” Ms. Psaki said.

Stalled Economic Plan Vexes Vulnerable Dems

Some House Democrats are calling for the Biden administration and congressional leaders to reignite negotiations over their stalled economic agenda. Progress on the roughly $2 trillion tax and social spending package hit a wall in December when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he wouldn’t support the legislation, citing concerns about inflation, the national debt, and a reliance on short-term spending programs that would likely later be extended. With congressional primaries on the horizon ahead of November’s midterms, Democrats in competitive races want to see progress on the reconciliation package soon. While there is a desire to move talks along, there isn’t yet a consensus on what the right approach should be. Some lawmakers are ready to shift the focus away from a comprehensive economic bill and focus on narrower legislation that includes more popular provisions. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said Democrats should get “very practical” about advancing parts of their agenda, noting that a narrower bill focused on child care and universal pre-K education would still be “transformative” for families. But Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.) said a comprehensive reconciliation package is the way to go to ensure education, health care, and climate change are addressed. “Maybe we give it some finite amount of time for Joe Manchin to tell us ‘no’ again, if they want to keep working on trying to convince him,” said Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.). “But let’s not beat our collective head against the wall for three months.”

Labor Agencies Face Biden Enforcement Push Without Extra Funding

The collapse of talks on Democrats’ tax and social spending legislation has put labor-focused agencies in a difficult position—they face increased enforcement demands under the Biden agenda but can’t bank on an infusion of extra cash to support those efforts. The House-passed version of the Build Back Better Act—now in need of a political resurrection after moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) balked at supporting it—would’ve spread $2.117 billion in additional enforcement funding between the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board. The funding would grease the wheels of the Biden administration’s labor agenda, which aims at stricter enforcement of federal labor and employment laws. That cash would allow for the hiring of waves of new investigators to rebuild agencies’ enforcement ranks following Trump-era attrition. It also would give the DOL and other agencies more bandwidth to meet increased enforcement demands associated with pandemic response and the coming boom in federal contracts under the $1 trillion infrastructure law. Some attorneys, lawmakers, and former agency staffers said in interviews that if the social spending bill can’t be resurrected—or a slimmed-down version emerges that drops the enforcement funding—the administration will have lost a rare opportunity to bolster historically cash-strapped agencies outside of the regular appropriations process.