Reeves: Second lawsuit against OSHA will challenge Biden’s ‘flagrant abuse of power’

JACKSON, Miss. (WLOX) - Mississippi could soon be filing suit against federal authorities as state leaders continue their push to challenge President Biden’s sweeping vaccine mandate.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced Friday that he intended to file a lawsuit against OSHA. His announcement came just hours after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said Mississippi had joined Louisiana and Indiana in filing suit against the president.

“We are working closely with the Attorney General’s Office to file a second lawsuit shortly, challenging the OSHA vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 or more workers. We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to stop President Biden’s flagrant abuse of power,” stated Reeves in a statement made on social media.

The suit filed Thursday by attorney generals in Mississippi, Louisiana and Indiana names Biden as a defendant along with several federal agencies and their department heads.

Fitch, along with Louisiana AG Jeff Landry and Indiana AG Todd Rokita, say the mandate is vastly overreaching.

“In an effort to check the box on universal vaccination, President Biden has vastly overreached his authority, putting the jobs of one-fifth of the American workforce in jeopardy and violating vital principles, including state sovereignty, the rule of law, and religious liberty,” said AG Fitch. “The very fact that his own Administration is contradicting itself in directives carrying out his mandate is strong evidence of its lack of any foundation in fact or law. State Attorneys General asked the President to halt the mandate, and in the absence of any response, we are taking this legal action.”

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, asks the court to find that the federal contractor vaccine mandate is unlawful and prohibit its implementation.

Other notable claims in the 35-page complaint include the following:

• The Administration failed to even try to connect its mandate with any statutory language that might authorize taking the action.
• The mandate violates the Nondelegation Doctrine by taking actions not authorized by Congress.
• The mandate violates the Tenth Amendment by encroaching on States’ traditional police power, again, without any clear Congressional authority to do so.
• The mandate violates the Spending Clause by asking contractors, including many State agencies, to comply with highly ambiguous guidance applying to contractual relationships already in place.
• The Administration failed to follow even the most rudimentary public protections for notice and comment publication in the Federal Register and rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act.
• By failing to even attempt to provide a reason or explanation for its conclusory actions, particularly on a matter of such significant economic impact and with overwhelming reliance interests at stake, the Administration’s actions are arbitrary and capricious.

In all, more than a dozen states filed suit against Biden this week. On Friday, Republican attorney generals in Missouri, 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 suit, along with several private, nonprofit and religious employers.

To read the complaint filed by Mississippi in full, click here.

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