Ohio, other states sue Biden administration over vaccine mandates for workers

More than a dozen states, including Ohio, have filed legal challenges to the Biden administration’s recently announced COVID-19 vaccine mandates for workers (Source: “11 states sue the Biden administration over its vaccination mandate for large companies,” New York Times, Nov. 5).

The Biden administration on Thursday set Jan. 4 as the deadline for large companies to mandate coronavirus vaccinations or start weekly testing of their workers. The new rule, applying to companies with 100 or more employees, is expected to cover 84 million workers, roughly 31 million of whom are unvaccinated.

The attorneys general in 11 states filed a lawsuit on Friday in an effort to prevent the Biden administration from requiring large companies to mandate coronavirus vaccinations.

The lawsuit on Friday was filed in U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit by Missouri and was joined by Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. The office of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a Democrat, also joined in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit came a day after the attorneys general of Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio sued to stop the vaccine mandate for federal contractors from going into effect.