President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate represents a bold, unprecedented use of federal power. Despite its being advanced in the name of public health, and in the midst of a viral pandemic, it should fail because it undermines the Constitution’s balance between Congress and the president and between the federal and state governments. Congress has not vested the president with the power to govern every aspect of every office and factory in the nation, and even if it had, such a grant of sweeping power would violate the very division of authority between the national and state governments.
In fact, the administration implicitly concedes that it does not have the power to order every American to obtain a vaccine against COVID-19. Instead, it has announced that it will issue an emergency order by way of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA is to issue a rule that private employers with 100 or more employees require their workers to get vaccinated or get tested on a weekly basis, or else lose their jobs. Apparently, small businesses and individuals remain exempt from the Biden vaccine command — a sign of the constitutional problems to come.
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