On Friday, more than 20 Republican-led states filed lawsuits to challenge President Joe Biden’s vaccine requirements for private companies, triggering a high-risk legal showdown that pitted federal authorities against the rights of the states.

The requirements issued by the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Thursday apply to companies with more than 100 employees. Their workers must be vaccinated against COVID-19 and tested weekly by January 4th or before face mask requirements. These lawsuits require the court to decide whether the government’s efforts to contain the pandemic represent the seizure of federal power and usurp the state’s power to formulate health policies.

At least 26 states filed lawsuits Challenge the rules.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt said in a court document filed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in St. Louis on behalf of 11 states: “This authorization is unconstitutional, illegal and unwise.”

The Biden administration has always encouraged widespread vaccination as the fastest way to escape the pandemic. A White House spokesperson said Thursday that the authorization is designed to prevent the spread of a disease that has claimed more than 750,000 lives in the United States.

CMS requires healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID before January 4

The government expressed confidence that its requirements, including a fine of nearly $14,000 per violation, will withstand legal challenges, partly because its safety rules take precedence over state laws.

“The government clearly has the right to protect workers, and the actions announced by the president are designed to save lives and stop the spread of COVID,” White House spokesperson Karin Jean-Pierre said at a briefing on Thursday.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University’s Law Center and director of the World Health Organization’s Health Law Center, said that the half-century-old law that created the Occupational Safety and Health Agency gave it the power to establish minimum workplace safety measures.

“I think Biden has a rock-solid legal basis,” he said.

Critics targeted certain aspects of the requirement, including that it was passed as an emergency measure rather than after the agency’s regular rulemaking process.

What the federal COVID vaccine authorization means for companies and workers

“This is a real emergency,” said Godin, who spoke with the Biden administration about this request. “In fact, this is a national crisis. Any delay will result in thousands of deaths.”

The Republican attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming also joined the Missouri lawsuit. Also participating in the lawsuit was the office of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who was the only Democratic attorney general to participate in legal challenges to the authorization.

Miller said in a statement that he submitted it at the request of Republican Governor Kim Reynolds: “According to the law, I have a responsibility to prosecute or defend any behavior in court when the governor requests it.”

Other state leagues also filed lawsuits with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on Friday: Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Utah; and those in the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati Kansas, Kentucky, Idaho, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia; and Alabama, Florida, and Georgia in the 11th tour in Atlanta.

The industry has questions and concerns about CMS vaccine authorization

It is not clear whether different judges will decide on these challenges separately at the beginning, or whether they will merge the cases into a single court early in the process.

Some companies, associations and religious groups have also joined the petitions of the states, and some have filed their own lawsuits.

These include a conservative media company, two manufacturers in Wisconsin, companies in Michigan and Ohio, owners of 15 grocery stores in Louisiana and Mississippi, and a group of remote workers in Texas. All are represented by conservative law firms.

“In the past 20 months, my employees have appeared in their communities in the face of COVID and hurricanes to work and serve their communities. Now the government tells me to include myself in their private health decisions?” Has about 500 employees The employee’s grocery store owner, Brandon Trosclair, said in a statement. “That’s wrong, I won’t stand it.”

Not a modern healthcare subscriber? Register today.

The Daily Wire media company objected in several areas, including the idea that employers must track which workers are vaccinated and treat vaccinated and unvaccinated employees differently.

“What the government is asking us to do is to discriminate against our own employees because of their personal healthcare decisions,” said Ryan Boring, the company’s co-CEO.

Shannon Royce, chairman of the Christian Employers Union, stated that the organization has not challenged the anti-vaccination rules and pointed out that some members of the organization provide employees with incentives to vaccinate. Instead, they “oppose being used as a tool of the federal government.”

Albert Mohler, dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that workplace regulations have also changed the relationship between religious organizations and their employees.

Moeller said: “I believe this is a form of government coercion-turning religious institutions into a form of government coercion that we must resist.”

So far, the courts have allowed companies to require employees to be vaccinated. But Michael Elkins, an employment lawyer in Florida, said that these decisions do not necessarily mean that judges will rule in the same way when it comes to federal government requirements.

Elkins said: “You might see a federal judge, or a group of them, say,’This is just too much.’

New York labor attorney Benjamin Noren (Benjamin Noren) said he believes the rule may be repealed because OSHA is designed to deal with workplace hazards, such as chemicals, rather than viruses. He said that OSHA has enacted 10 emergency rules in the past five years. Of the six challenged, only one was intact.

Nolan said: “This is an innovative use of the Biden administration to find a certain way of compulsory vaccination in the private sector.” “I hope it works. I have questions.”

Before the OSHA rules were issued, some states had passed laws or issued executive orders to prevent or restrict employer authorization related to the virus.

In Arkansas, Governor Asa Hutchinson approved such a bill Become law without his signatureIt will take effect early next year and will allow employees to opt out of the vaccine requirement if they undergo weekly virus tests or can prove that they have antibodies to COVID-19 from a previous infection. Health officials said that antibody tests should not be used to assess immunity to the virus, and people who have been infected with the virus should still be vaccinated.

However, Hutchinson pointed out that if both the law and federal requirements (which do not allow antibody testing to replace vaccination) are in effect, then the opt-out law in his state will create difficulties for companies.

“We have placed our business under Rule 22,” he said. “You violated someone’s law here.”