Although much of the rhetoric surrounding the new federal vaccine mandates focuses on individual rights—“how dare they force me to inject something into my body?”—the government can generally regulate its own employees, or those it funds with Medicaid/Medicare dollars, so the strongest legally cognizable claims there are for people with valid religious or medical objections. And the latter has to include natural immunity, which provides more robust and durable protection against COVID-19 than any vaccine.
But the more systemic problem comes with the mandate imposed on businesses, requiring all those that employ more than 99 people to have their employees vaccinated. That private‐sector mandate, which potentially affects more than 100 million people, presents a constitutional triple threat.
First, there’s a separation‐of‐powers issue in that this sweeping new regulation is being imposed by presidential diktat, with related claims about the proper scope of OSHA’s statutory authority and whether Congress can even delegate such broad power to the executive branch….
Second, even if the executive branch is permissibly interpreting the relevant federal laws, these kinds of impositions are hardly a regulation of interstate commerce (or the use of any other constitutionally enumerated power)…
Third, forcing private businesses to do the government’s dirty work isn’t a “proper” means of effectuating the goal of limiting the pandemic…. Read more»
Ilya Shapiro | “Federal Vaccine Mandates Pose a Constitutional Triple Threat” | CATO Institute | Sept 10, 2021
Resources
- How To Subscribe To Heidelmedia
- The Heidelblog Resource Page
- How to support Heidelmedia: use the donate button below this post or on the front page.
- Heidelmedia Resources
- The Ecumenical Creeds
- The Reformed Confessions
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008).
- Resources On Covid And Religious Liberty
- Resources On Religious Liberty
- An Outline Of A Moral Objection To Vaccine Mandates