For your reference, here’s the announcement, and here’s the Tenth Amendment.
The mandate is broken into three big pieces, which will be addressed individually: government employees, health care workers, and employees of large employers.
Government Employees:
The Federal Government is acting as an employer, not as the government. The courts have long held that it’s ok for an employer to say “no smoking” or “we don’t cover birth control pills.” The courts have also said it’s ok to have requirements for a job. Schools — a specialized “employer” — have required certain vaccines since before I was a small child. That ship has sailed.
Health Care Workers:
The Feds are using their authority under the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services Conditions of Participation. They are in essence saying “If you want our money, you must do these things.” Since at least 99% of hospitals receive money from Medicare, Medicaid, or both, effectively all hospitals will be finding ways to comply with this rule once the actual rules are finalized (it’s already a done deal in some states like California). This is another case where the courts spoke years ago and the ship has long since sailed.
There are a few places that think they can legislate or make executive orders to make this go away. Florida’s governor appears to be backing down about a half step, only vowing to fight the mandate for businesses. Texas’s governor not so much. There are teams of hospital lawyers girding up for battle, because hospitals want to get paid and federal regulations overrule states.
The one aspect of this I find interesting is that the mandate as announced (no word on implementation yet) does not appear to have a loophole to regularly test employees that have legitimate medical contraindications to the vaccine. I do have a horse in this race. My building could lose employees if there’s not a loophole. However I’m the sucker who is going to be running a lot of COVID tests if there is.
Large Employers:
Here’s where stuff gets interesting. The rule would require employers with 100 or more employers to mandate vaccines. And there’s a testing loophole. This falls under OSHA. Fun thing about the law creating OSHA, the OSH Act. There’s a part of it called Section 18 that allows states to have their own OSHA rules. There’s your Tenth Amendment compliance right there. Done. However, those rules have to be at least as strong as the federal rules. You can have your state rules, but only if those state rules also include stuff like the vaccine mandate.
The Vaccine Mandate doesn’t violate the Tenth Amendment, stop saying it does.