The Justice Department has requested a federal appeals court to allow President Joe Biden’s administration to resume its enforcement of a federal employee vaccine mandate previously blocked by a lower-court judge.
The DOJ request on Monday follows a 2-1 decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the previous Thursday to reverse its decision blocking the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for civilian federal workers. The DOJ says the judge who blocked the mandate in January, Jeffrey Brown, did not have the jurisdiction to do so.
Attorneys for the DOJ asked the appeals court on Monday to take “appropriate steps so that the government may resume implementation and enforcement” of Biden’s federal vaccine mandate executive order. They added that the measures are “justified by the serious ongoing harm to the public interest and to the government.”
In the panel’s 2-1 decision, the majority said the plaintiffs who sued against the mandates sought “to circumvent” the Civil Service Reform Act’s review scheme, siding with the argument posited by the Biden administration for employees to raise their grievances through the CSRA.
via joemiller
