The people making the rules must not be parents. Parents know toddlers cannot mask up. And why would we destroy a volunteer base of 1,000,000 people with a genetic injection mandate?
The decision was in Louisiana v. Becerra here; Brick v. Biden was consolidated into this lawsuit.
Plaintiffs: The State of Louisiana and 23 other states including Ohio.
Defendants: the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, the Principal Deputy Assistant for Children and Families, and the Director of the Office of Head Start.
The Head Start Mandate required Head Start program teachers, staff and volunteers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and all adults and children in the program to wear face masks.
The Federal District Court for the District of Louisiana issued a permanent injunction against the Agency Defendants enjoining and restraining the Agency Defendants from implementing the Head Start Mandate.
Ruling:
The District Court pointed out that the central issue of this lawsuit was separation of powers.
The Defendants based their authority to impose the Head Start Mandate solely on Title 42 U.S.C. § 9836a(a)(1) (C)-(E). Particularly, the provision states that: “The Secretary shall modify, as necessary, program performance standards by regulation applicable to Head Start agencies and programs…including... such other standards as the Secretary finds to be appropriate.
The word “modify” means that Congress only gave the relevant agencies “the power to make moderate or minor changes in the program performance standards.” The District Court noted that the Head Start Mandate was not a moderate or minor change in the program performance standards.
The Supreme Court has held that Congress must “speak clearly if it wishes to assign an agency decision of vast economic and political significance.” Util. Air Regul. Grp. v. EPA 573 U.S. 302, 324, (2014).
In addition, the Supreme Court stated that “[a]gencies only have those powers given to them by Congress and ‘enabling legislation’ is generally not an ‘open book to which the agency [may] add pages and change the plot line.’” West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 142 U.S. 2587, 2609 (2022).
Given that the agencies imposed the mandate on 273,600 Head Start staff, 864,000 children and approximately 1,000,000 volunteers, it was an agency decision of vast economic and political significance. Congress never spoke clearly to grant this power to the agencies to impose the mandate. The District Court also found that nothing in the statute gave powers to the agencies to impose specific medical treatments (i.e. vaccination) on anyone. Therefore, it held that the mandate exceeded the agencies’ power given by Congress.