The Supreme Court tossed multiple conflicting lower court rulings on Monday about the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal employees, as well as for members of the military.
The Supreme Court vacated decisions in three cases from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit after finding there was no longer a live controversy. President Joe Biden revoked the executive order instituting the mandate for federal employees in May, and the Department of Defense (DOD) did away with its mandate in January.
“The Fifth Circuit wrongly upheld a nationwide preliminary injunction forbidding the government from enforcing [the executive order], which required civilian federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the Biden admin told the court in the case from the Fifth Circuit. “The government’s appeal of that preliminary injunction became moot when the President revoked EO 14,043 several weeks after the Fifth Circuit entered judgment.”
The Fifth Circuit found in a case brought by a group known as Feds for Medical Freedom that the Biden administration could not have authority over “private, irreversible medical decisions made in consultation with private medical professionals outside the federal workplace.”
The high court’s decision means the appeals court precedent will not be a factor in future rulings on the issue. (RELATED: White House Pressured YouTube To ‘Crack Down On Vaccine Misinformation,’ New Docs Reveal)
Kidding aside, it is interesting to see that the one Justice who didn’t think the Biden Administration had shown its entitlement to vacatur of adverse precedent regarding its vaccine program was the Court’s one Biden appointee. https://t.co/tw5uAXyvhr
— John Elwood (@johnpelwood) December 11, 2023
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the one Biden appointee on the Court, dissented from the majority’s decision in two of the cases. Jackson has been a critic of the legal procedure used to undo the rulings, known as a Munsingwear vacatur, frequently dissenting from its use.
“In my view, the party seeking vacatur has not established equitable entitlement to that remedy,” she wrote.
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