A federal district judge last week granted Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s request for a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contract workers.
Judge Steven Merryday of the Middle District of Florida issued the 38-page decision on Dec. 22, finding that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other defendants failed to show that COVID-19 had led to employee absenteeism or production delays among federal contractors. The vaccine mandate was also akin to an act of executive overreach on the part of federal officials, Merryday said.
“COVID-19 … appeared in the United States almost two years ago, but OMB fails … to identify any instance in which absenteeism attributable to COVID-19 among contractor employees resulted in delayed procurement or increased costs also attributable to COVID-19,” the judge stated.
Merryday said the OMB’s arguments amounted to a quickly manufactured ploy to justify a policy that would lead to an unconstitutional intrusion into health issues that historically have been left to the states.
“The absence in the record of evidence suggesting that in the last two years contractor absenteeism has impeded federal contracting … suggests a ruse, a mere contrivance, superficially attempting to justify a sweeping, invasive and unprecedented public health requirement imposed unilaterally by President Biden,” he said.
Moody said she was proud to have secured the injunction on Twitter and in an email to the Florida Record.
“Floridians should not have to choose between the vaccine and their careers,” she said. “There is still a lot of fight left in us, and we will continue to push back against unlawful federal overreach.”
Previously, the attorney general said that Florida private businesses and public entities that have millions of dollars in contracts with the federal government would be negatively affected by the vaccine mandate. Those affected include universities, the state Department of Education and Space Florida, the state’s aerospace economic development agency.
The OMB’s deadline for federal contract workers to be vaccinated had been Jan. 18.