The state of Tennessee sued the federal government Thursday, claiming vaccine requirements for federal contractors is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
The U.S. Department of Labor released its vaccine mandate for businesses Thursday. The rules say companies with more than 100 employees must require them to be vaccinated or pass weekly Covid-19 tests.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed sweeping legislation last week in a special session on Covid that takes away most companies’ ability to require vaccines or masks of their employees. That legislation, however, does not cover federal contractors.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the government’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors. Tennessee joins Ohio and Kentucky in the suit.
“Unless we intervene, federal contractors in Tennessee will be forced to make sense of the mandate’s many inconsistencies that require their entire workforce be vaccinated or face potential blacklisting and loss of future federal contracts,” Slatery said in a statement. “That is simply unworkable and this lawsuit seeks to stop it.”
The attorneys worry such a mandate could create a “workforce loss” big enough to present “a significant concern for the economies of their states and could exacerbate ongoing supply chain issues.”
They argue the mandate is unconstitutional because Congress did not give the president authority to issue it.
”Pronouncing that his ’patience is wearing thin’ with people who choose to forgo the Covid-19 vaccine, President Joe Biden signed an unlawful executive order to compel millions of Americans who work for government contractors to receive a Covid-19 vaccine,” reads the complaint.
For Tennessee, Slatery argues that the mandate claims to preempt state law and violates the state’s sovereign interests to set its own laws. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law preempts state law, even when the laws conflict.
