Third Injunction Blocks Biden’s Mandate for Federal Contractors

A federal judge in Missouri has issued a preliminary injunction against Biden’s mandate requiring all federal contractors to force their employees to be “vaccinated.” Missouri AG Eric Schmitt announced the decision:

This injunction joins an injunction against the mandate already in place nationwide as a federal court in Georgia on Dec. 7 granted the injunction against the Biden mandate in a separate seven-state lawsuit led by Georgia.

U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce wrote in this latest ruling, “It will not harm the federal government to maintain the status quo while the courts decide the issues of the President’s authority and the implications for federalism. The Court concludes that, on balance, consideration of the harms and the public interest weigh in favor of a preliminary injunction.”

This latest preliminary injunction applies to Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The prior ruling in Georgia, while initially applying to Georgia, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia, was applied to the entire nation on the basis that the trade organization Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) was granted permission by the court to intervene in the case as a plaintiff and the organization represents members across the country.

U.S. District Judge Stan Baker wrote, “[G]iven the breadth of ABC’s [nationwide] membership … limiting the relief to only those before the Court would prove unwieldy and would only cause more confusion. Thus, on the unique facts before it, the Court finds it necessary, in order to truly afford injunctive relief to the parties before it, to issue an injunction with nationwide applicability…”

This new preliminary injunction joins the Georgia ruling and another more limited ruling from November 30th that blocked Biden’s mandate in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.