Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III and 20 Attorneys General are calling on President Joe Biden to withdraw his Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on federal contractors.
On Sept. 9, through Executive Order 14042, President Biden directed federal departments and agencies to include a clause in contracts requiring all contractors and subcontractors to adopt COVID Safety protocols.
On Sept. 24, pursuant to the Biden Order, the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force issued guidance imposing a vaccination mandate that is more expansive than the President’s Executive Order, is internally inconsistent, and is at odds with actions taken elsewhere by the federal government.
“The Federal Contractor Mandate is simply not workable,” said General Slatery. “It is inconsistent with other federal COVID-19 guidelines, fails to account for industry-specific factors, and imposes unduly broad obligations unrelated to protecting people working on federal contracts.”
As various agencies have begun to issue their implementing memoranda and guidance, contractors have faced a series of conflicting directives. Instead of assistance from the Administration in making sense of the inconsistencies, contractors have faced short deadlines coupled with the threat of being blacklisted or losing contracts for non-compliance.
In addition to Tennessee, the letter was sent by the Attorneys General for Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
You can read the letter here: https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/attorneygeneral/documents/pr/2021/pr21-40-letter.pdf