January 3, 2022

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday announced his advocacy group has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the Biden administration’s attempt to require large businesses to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for its workers or require frequent testing.

Pence filed the brief, which was shared with The Hill, through his political advocacy group Advancing American Freedom. In the document, Pence’s organization argues the Biden White House’s mandate is unconstitutional and would exceed previous examples of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) use of emergency authority.

“America is about freedom and the ability to make the best decision for your family or business, and Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate must be stopped in its tracks in order to preserve freedom, protect American livelihoods and businesses, and to safeguard our constitution,” Pence said in a statement.

The brief outlines nine previous cases where OSHA used an emergency temporary standard to expedite the standard rule-making process. Pence’s brief argued there is a distinction in that the previous instances sought to regulate workplace dangers like asbestos or other chemicals that threatened workers’ safety, not require employees to get vaccinated or get some other medical treatment.

The brief from Pence’s group argues that the OSHA rule requiring vaccinations suggests “the Biden Administration is not truly seeking to mitigate workplace hazards through the [emergency temporary standard], but rather is attempting to use OSHA to accomplish an end that it has been unable to persuade Congress to support: the mandatory vaccination of the American public.”

The Biden White House has said it does not support making the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for the public.

Pence’s group has previously filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court outlining positions on prominent cases on abortion and school choice. The former vice president is the latest conservative politician to weigh in against the Biden administration’s push for large businesses to require vaccinations or regular testing for employees as part of an aggressive strategy to end the pandemic.

The workplace mandate is scheduled to take effect this month and could affect an estimated 84 million employees. It generally requires larger businesses with more than 100 employees to adopt written policies requiring workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or wear masks and undergo regular testing.

The Biden administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to leave intact a workplace vaccine-or-test mandate as public health officials contend with the surging COVID-19 pandemic.

DOJ lawyers argued that the 1970 law that established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) makes plain that the policy “falls squarely within OSHA’s statutory authority.”

But conservatives, including several interest groups and governors, have argued in court that the OSHA rule is an example of government overreach and that the White House should not have the power to require certain groups to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which has spread rapidly in recent weeks thanks to the highly contagious omicron variant.

Read the original on The Hill.

A conservative group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence announced Monday its legal support for several business groups and states that are asking the Supreme Court to pause President Joe Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for companies with 100 or more employees.

Pence’s group, a nonprofit called Advancing American Freedom (AAF), asked permission from the Supreme Court to file an amicus brief supporting multiple petitions that are challenging the mandate that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is implementing this week for private sector employers with 100-plus employees.

The White House estimates the OSHA mandate will affect more than 80 million workers nationwide.

AAF’s brief argues:

Through the separation of powers, the Framers of our Constitution tightly bounded the ability of the Executive Branch unilaterally to impose bodily mandates on American citizens, or to erect barriers to work, that were not clearly authorized by the peoples’ elected representatives in Congress. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) recently published Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), issued November 4, 2021, ignores those limitations.

On December 22, the Supreme Court made an extraordinarily rare decision to hold oral arguments on January 7 on four emergency applications for stay — two of which are being supported by AAF’s amicus brief — filed by several business groups and a majority of states in the nation. The two emergency applications for stay included in AAF’s brief were filed in response to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s decision to allow Biden to move forward with his vaccine mandate on private employers while legal challenges surrounding the mandate are still being litigated.

In addition to arguments about the two applications challenging the OSHA mandate, the Supreme Court on January 7 will also hear arguments over two applications challenging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate that 10 million healthcare workers be vaccinated.

The Supreme Court’s December 22 order about the oral arguments is significant in that it marks the first time in many years that the High Court will hold such arguments over emergency applications for temporary stay.

In a statement about AAF’s amicus brief, Pence emphasized his stance that the vaccine mandates are a violation of individual freedom.

“America is about freedom and the ability to make the best decision for your family or business, and Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate must be stopped in its tracks in order to preserve freedom, protect American livelihoods and businesses, and to safeguard our Constitution,” Pence said.

He added, “Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate is not the American way, and Advancing American Freedom will always stand up to unconstitutional overreach from the Executive Branch that infringes on the freedoms we so greatly cherish.”

AAF, which Pence launched in April 2021, promotes the pro-life movement, school choice, religious liberty, and other conservative principles, and the group has filed numerous amicus briefs in support of its causes.

The applications are NFIB v. OSHA, No. 21A244, and Ohio v. Dep’t of Labor, No. 21A247 in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Read the original on Breitbart.