Good Intentions Are Not Enough

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the hard time that President Biden’s vaccine mandates are encountering in the courts:

What legal sage advised President Biden to impose vaccine mandates? The adviser needs to have his law licence pulled because the courts are repudiating the Administration’s mandates at an astonishing pace. A federal judge in Georgia was the latest on Tuesday when he blocked its vaccine requirement for employees of federal contractors—the fifth judicial rebuke in less than a month.

Judge R. Stan Baker ruled in a challenge brought by seven states that the Administration had exceeded its authority under the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act. The President claimed his executive order would “promote economy and efficiency in procurement” by contracting with sources “that provide adequate Covid-19 safeguards for their workforce.”

But the law does not give the President “the right to impose virtually any kind of requirement on businesses that wish to contract with the Government (and, thereby, on those businesses’ employees) so long as he determines it could lead to a healthier and thus more efficient workforce or it could reduce absenteeism,” Judge Baker wrote.

Last week federal Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove enjoined the Administration from enforcing the contractor mandate in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. While conceding that Congress delegated broad power to the President, the judge noted that his “authority is not absolute” and the President’s overreach raises “several concerning statutory and constitutional implications.” The mandate “intrudes on an area that is traditionally reserved to the States,” Judge Tatenhove wrote, noting the Constitution grants the states general police powers to regulate public health and welfare.

which you may notice closely follows what I have been saying.

Good intentions are not enough. You must also be doing the right things in the right way. Anything else is a waste of time. I like to believe that the Administration thinks that its good intentions are enough but they increasingly seem to be showing that they are less interested in actually accomplishing things than in being seen to be trying to accomplish things.

As I’ve also said before I believe the executive branch should be using its constitutional powers as well as encouraging the legislative branch and the states to use theirs. I have no doubt that the states have the authority to impose vaccine mandates and I am equally certain that the federal government has the authority to regulate commerce and transportation between the states, particularly on federal highways.

I recognize that some will view this as pure partisan politics but I think it’s more than that. It’s an issue of separation of powers and legal authority. Presidents are not absolute monarchs. It doesn’t matter to which party they belong.