EXPLAINER: Must employers follow Biden's vaccine mandates?
Tens of millions of workers across the U.S. are in limbo as federal courts have put President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates affecting private companies largely on hold.
On Wednesday, a federal appeals court panel lifted a nationwide ban against the administration's vaccine mandate for health care workers, creating the potential for patchwork enforcement across the country. Vaccine mandates covering companies with at least 100 employees and those that have contracts with the federal government also are held up in the courts.
The courts are responding to lawsuits brought by Republican-led states, businesses and other opponents. Numerous other legal challenges are pending, some involving groups of states and others filed by states acting alone.
The rulings have led vaccine mandates to be halted at some large employers. They include Michigan Medicine, the academic medical center of the University of Michigan, the three largest state universities in Kansas and the city of Phoenix.
Despite other legal challenges, separate Biden administration vaccine mandates for federal government employees and the military remain in effect, as do mask requirements for airline passengers and people using public transportation.
The legal cases concern whether the federal government can force employers to require vaccinations. Courts have generally been accepting of requirements that businesses and universities have put in place on their own — as well as those imposed by state and local governments.
More than four-fifths of adults nationwide already have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. But Biden contends his various workforce vaccine mandates are an important step to drive up vaccination rates and containing the virus outbreak, which has killed more than 800,000 people in the U.S.
Opponents have...
