The White House is directing federal agencies to halt suspending or firing any federal employees over not receiving the COVID-19 jab despite spending months promoting mandates as an urgent, top priority for the Biden administration.
According to ABC News, the decision comes from the Office of Management and Budget which claims that approximately 92 percent of federal workers have begun the COVID-19 vaccination process.
The Biden administration pushed vaccine mandates as a solution to the COVID-19 pandemic for months and warned that the agencies in charge of rolling out the rules, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, would need to act swiftly to meet the urgency of the situation. The still-developing emergency temporary standards, however, were completely unenforceable for weeks. Even when OSHA finally rolled out its version of a mandate for private employers with 100 or more employees, full compliance was not demanded until 2022.
Shortly after the news of Biden’s not-yet-public halt on firing federal employees over their vaccination status broke on Monday morning, a federal judge temporarily suspended the president’s vaccine requirements for healthcare entities that receive federal funding in Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
“The scale falls clearly in favor of healthcare facilities operating with some unvaccinated employees, staff, trainees, students, volunteers and contractors, rather than the swift, irremediable impact of requiring healthcare facilities to choose between two undesirable choices — providing substandard care or providing no healthcare at all,” U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp wrote.
