What Does The Injunction on the COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Mean?
There has been a temporary injunction put into place by the fifth circuit Court of Appeals for the new OSHA rule that would require all employees of companies with more than 100 employees to get vaccinated by January fourth. There are really two facts that you need to know about this injunction.
First off is the fact that the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is not the Supreme Court. They are not the same thing.
The truth is, they are not the only appellate court hearing cases over this injunction. The fifth circuit is just one of 6 appellate courts hearing cases from a total of 25 states and lots of private companies and unions.
The second fact that you should be aware of is that the three judges from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals all agreed to put this injunction into place and is a halt on the implementation of the OSHA rule under emergency temporary standard.
Now that does not mean that the rule is thrown out completely. It just means that there is a halt on its implementation until the rule can be litigated and ruled on.
When it comes to the process for the court cases, we have to look at the fact that there are several petitioners challenging the same rule. When this happens, the challenges are ultimately consolidated into one circuit. This is done through the process known as the muli-circuit lottery.
The way this works is that any petitioner that wants to challenge the OSHA rule must file their case and follow a certain set of procedures within the first ten days of the rule’s publishing. If they are successful at completing the necessary steps within those ten days, their circuit is entered into the lottery. After those ten days are up, a panel based in Washington DC will conduct a blind lottery and choose a circuit at random to ultimately hear the case.
Once the circuit is chosen, all challenges will be transferred to that circuit. It is important to note that we have not yet hit that ten day mark, so we will have to wait and see what happens.
