President Biden's Mandate Goes Before the Supreme Court Tomorrow – ACLJ Legal Team Provides a Preview

Tomorrow, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the Biden employer vaccine mandate that forces employers of 100 or more workers to implement a policy requiring employees to get the COVID vaccine or to test weekly. The ACLJ is representing The Heritage Foundation in their first major lawsuit, directly challenging this mandate.

The President of The Heritage Foundation, Dr. Kevin Roberts, joined Sekulow to give his thoughts going into this oral argument tomorrow:

Well, two thoughts. First, is gratitude, to you and your colleagues and wonderful staff at the ACLJ for representing us. . . . Second is cautious optimism. I mean I am not an attorney, so you can’t trust this historian to predict tomorrow’s outcome. But cautious optimism because of the merits of this case built by you and your team, augmented by the great legal scholars of Heritage. We are just hopeful that this Court, which has become stronger in their thinking, is going to do the right thing and protect the sacrosanct relationship that employers have with their employees, mainly by protecting that private information by employees. 

Dr. Roberts added:

All we need to do is go into a shopping center, or a store, or your Church, or your place of business and ask people about how they have been affected by the supply chain issues or how they have been affected by just the confusion of all of these orders. The onerous nature of this mandate is clear enough and that’s one thing. But it is an entirely different thing to be caught in this no man’s land where you’re hopeful that everything goes well in tomorrow’s hearing, but because you aren’t sure . . . you have to spend some time to actually get your work done. This is affecting American businesses and American life, and it really is tragic. 

It really is tragic, and we wish that the situation was going to get better. But even since this mandate was originally created, the circumstances have drastically changed making compliance with the mandate even more burdensome and, in some cases, impossible. With the new Omicron variant rapidly spreading, there are not enough tests available. The situation is evolving quickly. Yet on Monday, the mandate will go into effect, unless the Supreme Court issues an administrative stay.

Chief Medical Advisor to the President – Dr. Anthony Fauci – even admitted that we are not prepared to implement this mandate right now, saying:

We are already in a situation where quite frankly we don’t have enough tests at this particular point in time to get everybody to uniformly have the availability of testing. . . . That will change considerably in January. Well right now, you just keep trying. . . . You can’t do the impossible. If you can’t find it, you can’t find it. You just keep trying and doing your best.

ACLJ Senior Counsel Andy Ekonomou summarized two of the main issues when it comes to this mandate:

First, the federalism issue. . . . This is not something for the central government or the federal government to be involved in. The President himself admitted that and his advisors, and his Justice Department, and OSHA, and so forth, should take a page out of his book and realize that this is a matter reserved to the states under our Constitution. Each state varies. The situation in each state is different. . . . Therefore, that’s why the state sovereignties should come into play and make a determination . . . of whether or not regulations or restrictions should be placed upon that. This is not the job of the central government. Our Constitution forbids it. . . . The second part . . .  the stay, . . . the Supreme Court has so far refused to enter an Administrative Stay in the case. They could do so within hours of the argument on Friday, they could meet and have a conference and issue it. Or they could not, it depends on what the Justices want to do. That still remains to be seen.

It is our honor to be representing The Heritage Foundation in this monumental case. If we get an administrative stay from the argument tomorrow, that will be a positive sign. If we don’t get one, then portions of this mandate will go into effect on Monday. We will continue to provide you with updates on this case.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of the Biden employer vaccine mandate oral argument at the Supreme Court tomorrow.

Watch the full broadcast below.