Briefly Noted: Mandates, Schools
Two important stories today.
As discussed earlier, the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans (which includes TX) upheld its stay of the Mandate—in very strong terms (Fifth Circuit Slams Zhou Regime's Mandate). That was bad for the Zhou regime and its smarty pants consigliere, Ron Klain. Today it got worse, when it was announced that the Sixth Circuit had been randomly selected to handle the case:
Bonchie at Red State gets this exactly right, I think—and it looks like good news for our constitutional order:
How the administration plays this going forward will be very interesting. Biden’s handlers had to know that they were unlikely to prevail over the issuance of an overly broad “emergency rule” that was slated to go into effect four months after its announcement. Constitutional and timing issues heavily undermine their case. But how hard do they want to push this?
I ask that question because if this does get to the Supreme Court, things could get much worse for the White House. The conservatives on the nation’s highest court have already expressed skepticism of the administrative state’s power structure. Do Biden and his cohorts want to push a losing fight to the point that it could end up costing them far more than this just an OSHA regulation?
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This OSHA rule was always a long shot, and I think the White House knew that when they set it in motion. ... But can they stop the train before it careens off the cliff? Because if this is pushed all the way to the Supreme Court, the repercussions could be massive for the long-standing abuse of the bureaucratic state by Democrats.
I believe that every single Republican appointed SCOTUS justice has expressed the need to rein in the administrative state. That this hasn’t happened yet is partly that the SCOTUS always likes to get a case that combines the right facts with the right legal issues. The Mandate case looks like a no-brainer for reversal, based on both the facts and the law. The question is, could the SCOTUS use the case as a vehicle for a much broader assault on the abuses of the administrative state? The Mandate appears to be cruising for certain reversal in the Sixth Circuit. Will the Zhou regime try to defy the odds by appealing to the SCOTUS?
Perhaps the latest Mandate news gives us a clue. The regime initially responded to the Fifth Circuit with a show of bravado—urging businesses to keep firing unvaxxed workers. But today, after this news about the Sixth Circuit, we learn:
OSHA Suspends Medically Coercive Vaccine Mandate After Legal Pushback
NOVEMBER 17, 2021 By Haley Strack
The U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has suspended the implementation and enforcement of its controversial vaccine mandate just days after a federal court temporarily blocked the rule, citing “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”
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The administration’s backdown comes less than a week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued and reaffirmed an explosive motion to freeze the vaccine mandate prompted by the Biden administration. On Nov. 12, the court ordered that OSHA “take no steps to implement or enforce” the mandate “until further court order.”
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It’s all good news for now. And may be a sign that our constitutional order—rooted in federalism—retains more resilience than we may think in our more pessimistic moments.
We’ve written repeatedly about education and the need to escape from government run schools. Today at Powerline Paul Mirengoff has a good post on that topic: Will public school enrollment rebound?
In most of the post Mirengoff provides examples of the way enrollment in government schools has declined during the “pandemic”. However, beyond the data, what I liked was the intro, which raises the basic problem:
The movement to defeat race-obsessed left-wing school board members is a worthy one. It can be expected to improve public school education. However, there are limits to what even a conservative school board can do to limit woke instruction in the classroom.
At the end of the day, education will always be in the hands of teachers. And public school teachers will always be leftists compared to the population in the area. Even in conservative parts of the country, many public school teachers are leftists, and [not?] just comparatively.
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The pandemic drove down public school enrollment. This may be the only good thing about it — along with the fact that, with students at home, many parents got an eye-opening look at what their kids are being taught.
More good news, because the data that Mirengoff cites suggests that increasing numbers of parents have had enough. It’s a very positive development.
Re the Mandates being imposed by private companies, we probably also need lawsuits based on state employment law. Could end up being big differences between states.
I suspect this particular SC will decline taking these issues on allow whatever the lower court rulings are to stand.