Kansas AG Schmidt files lawsuit against Biden vaccine mandate for federal contractors
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt officially joined the ranks of Republican attorneys general suing the Biden administration over an executive order mandating federal contractors ensure their workforces are vaccinated against COVID-19.
Seven states — including Kansas — filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Schmidt announced the suit Saturday morning.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the mandate illegal and block its implementation.
The lawsuit Schmidt joined is one of several filed in recent weeks against the contractor requirement. On Friday, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt joined several states filing a similar challenge.
Biden issued the executive order calling on all federal workers and contractors to be vaccinated against COVID-19 last month. It is set to take effect Dec. 8.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also crafting a rule that will require most employers with 100 employees or more to require workers be vaccinated or undergo regular testing.
Schmidt is among several Republicans nationwide who have pushed back against federal vaccine mandates.
“No Americans should be threatened by their federal government with losing their jobs because their health care decisions differ from those preferred by the president of the United States,” Schmidt said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Nothing in the U.S. Constitution authorizes this sort of unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into the personal health care decisions of millions of American workers, and in our view the president certainly does not possess power to decree it on his own.”
The lawsuit filed Friday is similar to lawsuits that were filed earlier this week by Georgia and Texas. In all, 19 states have sued the Biden administration in the past few days over federal vaccine mandates.
Schmidt previewed the challenge Friday while testifying to a Legislative committee on government overreach and COVID-19 mandates.
He told lawmakers he was working with other states and didn’t think the federal mandate “works as a matter of law,” but cautioned the case was based on a set of facts that had not been tested in federal court before.
The lawsuit comes after Kansas’ three largest public universities, Wichita State, KU and K-State, announced last week that all employees must be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8 to comply with Biden’s order that all federal contractors require vaccines.
State universities had avoided such requirements this fall, citing a provision in the Kansas budget that barred the use of state funds on vaccine passports. However in a memo to Kansas colleges last week, Kansas Board of Regents President Blake Flanders told universities they would risk millions of dollars in federal contracts if they failed to comply with Biden’s mandate. He advised them to avoid using state funds on enforcement.
Testifying to lawmakers Friday, Flanders said KU alone could lose nearly $1 billion and Wichita State and Kansas State each risked more than $100 million in federal contracts. Those contracts, Flanders said, would also mean lost jobs in Kansas.
“With the aggressive timeline and nature of this we’re learning as we go,” Flanders said.
Lawmakers Friday pushed Flanders to ensure universities respected religious liberty when granting exceptions to the mandate.
Schmidt and Schmitt have also promised litigation against the upcoming vaccine requirements for health care workers and large private employers. The rules, which will be enforced through OSHA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, have not been published yet.
Kansas lawmakers are back in Topeka Saturday for the second day of the Interim Committee on Government Overreach and COVID-19 Mandates. The full day of the meeting is set aside for public comment on the issue.
During the first day of committee Friday, Wichita Republican Rep. Brenda Landwehr invoked the Holocaust twice in reference to public health guidelines, repeating sentiments first voiced by a Wichita union leader.
This story was originally published October 30, 2021 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Kansas AG Schmidt files lawsuit against Biden vaccine mandate for federal contractors."
