A federal judge on Tuesday issued a ruling in favor of Attorney General Steve Marshall’s legal action seeking to block the Biden administration’s mandate requiring health care workers to become vaccinated against COVID-19.
The United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted a motion for preliminary injunction halting President Joe Biden’s vaccine edict issued on November 4 through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
In his ruling, Judge Terry A. Doughty declared that the Biden administration lacked the constitutional authority to issue such a broad decree.
“If the separation of powers meant anything to the Constitutional framers, it meant that the three necessary ingredients to deprive a person of liberty or property—the power to make rules, to enforce them, and to judge their violations—could never fall into the same hands,” wrote Doughty. “If the Executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the Legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by the Constitution would be in the same hands.”
He further noted, “If human nature and history teach anything, it is that civil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency. During a pandemic such as this one, it is even more important to safeguard the separation of powers set forth in our Constitution to avoid erosion of our liberties.”
In response to the ruling, Marshall asserted that rather than convince the American public to become inoculated against the virus, Biden had resorted to forcing the citizenry to accept the vaccine through the power of the federal government.
He stated, “President Biden has abandoned persuasion for brute force in launching an unprecedented series of federal mandates aimed at compelling most of the adult population of the United States to get a COVID-19 vaccine, but his unlawful, unconstitutional, and un-American decrees are being met head-on in court by the force of law.”
Alabama’s chief law enforcement officer indicated that should Biden’s vaccine mandates go unchallenged, Americans could risk further loss of liberty as a result.
“Each of the Biden administration mandates has distinct and severe legal deficiencies that warrant distinct and severe responses from the states,” added Marshall. “This is about so much more than vaccines. It’s about planting a flag to say that enough is enough. The federal government’s power is not boundless, but if we are not vigilant to fight here and now, there will be no going back.”
Marshall joined attorneys general from Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia in bringing the victorious legal action.
Dylan Smith is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
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