The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday overturned a federal district court’s injunction against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for federal employees.
Meanwhile, the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to hear arguments Friday for and against an injunction against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors. The Department of Energy and its Office of Environmental Management have said far more than 90% of its federal and contractor workforce have already been vaccinated.
In the case of the mandate for federal employees, the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit said the District Court in Texas that blocked the civil-servant vaccine requirement did not actually have jurisdiction to hear the complaint that resulted in the preliminary injunction.
In January, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown in the Southern District of Texas ruled in favor of a group called Feds for Medical Freedom, which represents 6,000-members. The district judge enjoined the government from enforcing the mandate, saying those not seeking an exemption face “an inevitable firing” if they were not inoculated by Nov. 22, 2021, a deadline since pushed into 2022, the appeals court said.
The federal government argued unsuccessfully before the district judge that the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 does not provide jurisdiction in the Feds for Medical Freedom case because it involves only “after an employee suffers an adverse employment action,” and not be used as a pre-enforcement system.
Also, the Fifth Circuit said “[c]ritically, in this case, any adverse action against the plaintiffs remains “‘proposed.’”
The Civil Service Reform Act provides “comprehensive and exclusive procedures for settling work-related controversies between federal civil-service employees and the federal government,” the appeals court said.
Current civil procedures provide relief for federal employees who allege they are unfairly treated, the appeals court panel said. It added the Merit Systems Protection Board can order reinstatement and backpay to any nonexempt plaintiffs who are disciplined for refusing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
But one Fifth Circuit jurist broke with the majority. In a dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale on Thursday wrote that “[e]nacting the EO [executive order] and then requiring federal civilian employees who may later receive adverse action to seek relief now through CSRA would result in the very type of lengthy and haphazard results CSRA was enacted to prevent,” Barksdale said.
11th Circuit arguments won’t be livestreamed
With the Fifth Circuit’s ruling now on the books, the next big decision expected in the continuing saga of COVID-19 vaccine refusers will come from the Eleventh Circuit, which was set Friday to hear arguments about the White House’s vaccine mandate for the nation’s enormous workforce of federal contractors.
Oral arguments about a federal district judge’s order blocking the Biden administration contractor mandate will not be livestreamed but a recording should be posted online early next week, a court representative said Tuesday. A link to the 11th Circuit’s oral arguments recordings page can be found here.
Streaming of oral arguments before the Atlanta-based appeals court was used during the COVID-19 pandemic but the practice is occuring less now that most such hearings before a three-judge panel are happening in person again, an employee in the clerk of court’s office said by phone to Weapons Complex Monitor.
According to the appeals court calendar, the appeals panel will hear oral arguments sometime after 10 a.m. Eastern Time in the State of Georgia, and others versus the President of the United States, and others.
In December 2021, U.S. District Judge Stan Baker in Southern Georgia held that the Biden administration overstepped its authority by using the Procurement Act to mandate contract workers to be inoculated against the potentially deadly virus.
