This week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated its own ruling on the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate, putting the final bow on a major victory for Arizona Republicans, particularly House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen.
Arizona’s Republican legislators hailed the Ninth Circuit’s decision to vacate as mooting “the judgement in three cases concerning vaccine mandates.” The Ninth Circuit’s latest action follows the US Supreme Court’s ruling against the Biden administration on the matter.
On December 11, 2023, the Supreme Court “vacated as moot the judgment in three cases concerning vaccine mandates.”
On December 29, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled, “(1) vacated as moot this court’s April 19, 2023, opinion concerning President Biden’s Contractor Mandate and Executive Order 14042, which was subsequently rescinded; (2) dismissed this appeal; and (3) remanded to the district court with instructions to vacate the portion of the orders on appeal addressing all claims based on the Contractor Mandate.”
“The 9th Circuit today vacated its opinion that upheld Biden’s unconstitutional vaccine mandate for federal contractors. Thanks to @AZHouseGOP Speaker @RepBenToma for intervening to protect Arizonans’ medical freedoms!” tweeted the Republicans’ Arizona House account.
“Earlier this year, Biden issued a mandate that anyone who is employed by a federal contractor (which includes state government workers) is required to get the experimental COVID vaccine. President @votewarren immediately fought back at this unconstitutional overreach and didn’t stop even after Biden revoked his emergency order at the end of the pandemic. We’re happy to announce because of our persistence, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated their own decision, which means the federal vaccine mandate can no longer be relied on as precedence,” tweeted the Republicans’ Arizona Senate account.
The Legislature, under the leadership of Speaker of the House Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court over COVID-19 vaccine mandates on the federal level.
“We will not allow President Biden to blatantly undermine the will of the Arizona State Legislature in the protections we’ve provided for our citizens to prevent a COVID-19 vaccine mandate from dictating employment opportunities,” said Petersen at the time.
In September 2021, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced that his office was suing President Biden and other officials in his administration over their “unconstitutional” COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees, federal contractors, and private businesses with more than 100 employees.
Brnovich’s case was the first lawsuit of many in the country to be filed against the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
In January 2022, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) lacked the authority to impose a mandate because the law that created OSHA “empowers the Secretary to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures.”
“Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most,” the Court found in a 6-3 decision. “COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases.”