Children's Health Defense By
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out three cases challenging the Biden administration’s now-defunct COVID-19 vaccine mandate for executive branch employees and military service members.
The lower courts had reached conflicting decisions about the mandates in the three cases. However, before the Supreme Court heard them, the mandates were rescinded.
Rather than deciding the cases on their merits, the Supreme Court remanded the cases back to the lower courts with instructions to dismiss the cases as “moot.” In this instance, “moot” refers to a case involving an issue (COVID-19 vaccine mandates) that did exist, but was resolved by some means other than the court ruling in favor of one side or the other.
Once a case is declared moot, the lower court’s decision can no longer be used to set a precedent for future cases — which in this case opens the door for future vaccine mandates, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) staff attorney Ray Flores told The Defender.
“Erasing a ruling erases case precedent,” Flores said. “When the next mandates come, and they will, it’s back to square one.”
Marcus Thornton, president of Feds for Freedom, a plaintiff in one of the cases, said in a statement:
“We believe the United States Constitution clearly does not permit the federal government to force federal workers — or any law-abiding citizen — to inject their bodies with something against their will. In fact, the freedom to control your own body and your own medical information is so basic that, without those liberties, it is impossible to truly be ‘free’ at all.
“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court dodged these important constitutional arguments and instead chose to vacate our case on technicalities.”
Sujata Gibson, a civil rights attorney representing plaintiffs in several New York cases challenging COVID-19 vaccine mandates, told The Defender:
“In federal and state courts, the government strategy has largely been to try to moot problematic vaccine rulings, and vacate the lower court rulings, in what appears to be open gamesmanship. It is disappointing that the Supreme Court issued these rulings yesterday, as this will only encourage that tactic going forward.”
Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, which is also suing the Biden administration over the federal mandates, said the ruling marked a “dark day” for the country. She added:
“One of SCOTUS’ [Supreme Court of the United States] jobs is to reconcile conflicting rulings from the circuit courts. What they’ve done here is to cravenly abdicate their responsibilities — and pave the way for this to happen again.
“The onus is now on the little guys to spend all the time and energy to raise the money to mount a new lawsuit to challenge a new order should one arise, when SCOTUS could have and should have adjudicated this issue and settled it once and for all…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (childrenshealthdefense.org)
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