Arizona attorney general sues Biden over vaccine mandates

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Tuesday in response to its new policy that will require private employers with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccines or weekly testing.

“The federal government cannot force people to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The Biden Administration is once again flouting our laws and precedents to push their radical agenda,” Brnovich, who is currently waging a bid for the U.S. Senate, said in a statement.

The new policy, which President Biden unveiled last week, will be issued by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration “in the coming weeks.”

It could impact nearly 80 million workers.

Brnovich’s office is arguing that the policy is in violation of the Equal Protection Clause by “favoring migrants” who entered the U.S. at the southern border, rather than U.S. citizens. It said that by allowing migrants to decline getting inoculated, the administration is “protecting their freedom and bodily autonomy more than American citizens.”

His office said the policy represents an “unmistakable — and unconstitutional — brand of favoritism in favor of illegal migrants.”

“However, migrants who cross the southern border illegally are not subject to any vaccination requirements even when released directly into the United States (where most will remain),” his office said in a statement.

“There can be no serious or scientific discussion about containing the spread of COVID-19 that doesn’t begin at our southern border,” Brnovich added in a statement.

The attorney general’s office said the policy is “one of the greatest infringements upon individual liberties, principles of federalism, and separation of powers ever attempted by an American President.”

“Under our Constitution, the President is not a king who can exercise this sort of unbridled power unilaterally. And even George III wouldn’t have dreamed that he could enact such sweeping policies by royal decree alone,” the office said in a statement.

The attorney general told reporters during a call that there is “uncertainty, a confusion, as to what the president can or can’t do,” adding that he would work to shield the Constitution from “federal overreach,” according to CNN.

The suit is the first lawsuit filed against the Biden administration in response to its federal vaccine mandate.

Biden’s new policy has sparked outrage among a number of Republican governors, a number of whom have vowed to fight the mandate.