AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration Friday in hopes of blocking new federal rules that require workers at larger businesses to get vaccinated for COVID-19 by Jan. 4.
Administration officials said the rules, which apply to businesses with at least 100 workers, were essential to reinvigorating the economy and protecting the nation's workforce.
But Paxton said requiring private businesses to impose vaccine mandates was a "breathtaking abuse of federal power."
"This standard is flatly unconstitutional," he said. "Bottom line: Biden’s new mandate is bad policy and bad law, and I’m asking the court to strike it down."
The federal rules, released Thursday by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, also require unvaccinated employees at larger companies to wear a face covering on the job starting Dec. 5 and to be tested weekly for COVID-19 starting Jan. 4.
Joined by Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah — as well as seven private businesses — Paxton took his complaint directly to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
Paxton said he will follow the two-page complaint with a more detailed legal account that will ask the appeals court — where Republican-appointed judges outnumber Democratic appointees 12-5 — to overturn the federal vaccine mandate.
President Joe Biden in September announced his intention to implement a vaccine mandate for larger businesses as part of a wider pandemic action plan, then assigned OSHA to work out the details.
The standards announced Thursday preempt state bans on mask and vaccine mandates such as those implemented by Gov. Greg Abbott in executive orders issued in October and July, according to the U.S. Labor Department. In addition, federal law gives OSHA the authority to issue workplace health and safety guidelines that are beyond a state's power to regulate, administration officials said.
Paxton disagreed.
"OSHA has only limited power and specific responsibilities. This latest move goes way outside those bounds," he said.
The new federal standards do not stop businesses from imposing additional COVID-19 requirements, and the Labor Department is taking input over the next month on whether to extend the vaccine mandate to smaller businesses.
During the third special session that ended Oct. 19, Abbott asked the Legislature to ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates imposed by any government, business or organization in Texas. Lawmakers, however, took no action on the governor's request, though several Republicans this week called on Abbott to convene a fourth special session to counter the federal vaccine rules.
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