Today, The IU Family for Choice, not Mandates, Inc., (“IUFCNM”), filed a friend of the court brief in two U.S. Supreme Court cases considering whether the Biden administration will be allowed to move forward with its plans to mandate COVID vaccines for private employees.
At President Biden’s direction, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) recently issued a mandate to all private employers who employ more than 100 workers that requires all employees at these private companies to receive a COVID vaccine, be forced to comply with testing and masking requirements, or lose their jobs. If the employers do not comply with OSHA’s mandate, they face enormous fines, which could total billions of dollars and fuel further problems in an already tight labor market.
Numerous government agencies and officials, including the CDC Director, Dr. Walensky, admit that the COVID injections do not prevent infection by and transmission of COVID, but may provide protection from serious disease and death. Because they do not provide protection from the spread of the virus, IUFCNM argued that the COVID injections should be considered medical treatments, instead of a public health measure.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the government cannot force medical treatments on competent individuals who do not consent to the treatment. Outside of the context of prison, where the rights of prisoners to refuse treatment are circumscribed, such mandates are unlawful under constitutional precedent.
“Private employees are not prisoners, and they should be afforded the right to refuse an unwanted medical treatment,” said James Bopp, Jr., of The Bopp Law Firm, lead counsel for IUFCNM. “OSHA’s mandate is breathtaking overreach by an administration that seems bent on ignoring important constitutional rights. Federal agencies, like OSHA, simply do not have the police power to mandate vaccines. Even if OSHA had such power, which it doesn’t, it would have to exercise it according to established constitutional principles. OSHA’s mandate ignores both the scope of its power and the individual’s right to refuse unwanted medical treatment. We are happy to support IUFCNM’s fight against such unconstitutional actions.”
IU Family for Choice not Mandates Inc.
IUFCNM
vaccine mandates
mask mandates
Supreme Court
Indiana University
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
OSHA
Private employers
CDC Director Dr. Walensky