WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal workers nationwide Friday, in a ruling that leans on a Supreme Court order last week that stopped a similar rule for larger businesses.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown in the Southern District of Texas wrote that granting the preliminary injunction is about the authority of the president, and not about “whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19 — the court believes they should.”
“It is instead about whether the President can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment,” Brown wrote in a 20-page order. “That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.”
