This measure, which concerns companies with more than 100 employees, had been suspended on appeal. It can still be disputed before the Supreme Court.
Le Monde with AFP
An American Federal Court has reinstated on Friday 17 December, the immunization obligation for employees of large companies, desired by the Biden administration to stem the pandemic of COVID-19. The measure had been suspended in early November by another instance.
According to the text, the employees of companies with more than 100 employees will have to be vaccinated by the 4th of January, on pain of having to submit to very regular tests.
Announced mid-September, this measure had been adopted at the beginning of November by the White House and immediately disputed urgently before the justice in particular by the State of Texas, controlled by the Republicans opposed to any vaccine obligation to fight against the pandemic. The measure had been suspended on November 6 by a Texas Court of Appeal pending a substantive examination.
“The best way out of the epidemic”
Another court of appeal, in New Orleans, had maintained this suspension in mid-November, considering that the vaccination obligation exceeded “largely” the authority of the US government.
“It is established that COVID-19 continued to spread, mutate, killing and preventing the safe return of US employees at their work,” said the Court of Appeal Friday. Ohio, in turn seized by the Ministry of Justice to judge all the appeals. This decision can still be challenged before the US Supreme Court.
“To protect workers, OSHA [the Federal Occupational Health and Health Agency] can and must be able to respond to evolving hazards,” Jane Stranch adds. It notes that the OSHA has already benefited in the history of broad powers to ensure the safety of workers and “has demonstrated the generalized danger that the CVIV-19 poses on the workers – the non-vaccinated in particular – on their place of work “.
The suspension of the vaccine bond had been a major setback for the Democratic President Joe Biden who considered this measure as “the best way out of this pandemic”. “Too many people remain unvaccinated so that we can come out definitively,” he said.