NASHVILLE – Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery and six fellow Republican attorneys general launched a federal court challenge Friday to President Joe Biden’s day-old COVID-19 mandates for employers.
The federal rules require those with at least 100 workers to ensure their employees are vaccinated or else tested weekly, by Jan. 4, in an effort to stem the virus that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.
Attorneys general from Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Idaho also joined in to petition the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, asking that the new rules be blocked from taking immediate effect.
The states’ filing asks the appellate court to act on their request no later than Nov. 12. That was done in case the appellate court refused to act, thus giving the attorneys general the opportunity to seek “immediate relief” before the U.S. Supreme Court.
“As we anticipated, the mandate asserts an unprecedented expansion of emergency regulatory powers by a federal agency,” Slatery said in a statement. “Its scope and breadth is only exceeded by its length (about 500 pages). It also fails to consider the many steps already taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by individuals, employers and our state.”