Small businesses declare victory over President Biden's vaccine mandate

The Supreme Court's decision to block President Biden’s vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees is a victory for small businesses, claims Job Creators Network (JCN), an organization that seeks to support people who depend on small businesses.

“Job Creators Network and American small businesses have defeated the Biden administration’s illegal vaccine mandate that threatened to burden job creators with new costs and exacerbate the historic labor shortage,” said JCN President and CEO Alfredo Ortiz.

“JCN was first to petition the Supreme Court to block the rule, and we’re pleased that the Biden administration has followed the court’s ruling and JCN’s requests and scrapped this destructive mandate. This is a great victory for American small businesses who can now focus on bringing the economy back.”

The Supreme Court ruled against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) vaccine mandate for businesses on Jan. 13, blocking its enforcement.

“It is telling that OSHA, in its half-century of existence, has never before adopted a broad public health regulation of this kind—addressing a threat that is untethered, in any causal sense, from the workplace,” said the court.

“As the Supreme Court held, at the absolute most, OSHA could target only a few small types of industries where COVID presents an unusually high risk compared to other industries,” JCN said.

Effective Jan. 26, OSHA withdrew its vaccination and testing ETS for businesses.

“Again, after such a decisive loss at the Supreme Court, OSHA should stand back and let America’s small businesses give the nation’s economy a much-needed boost to help with struggling supply chains and worker shortages. But if OSHA insists on moving forward with more harmful mandates, Job Creators Network stands ready to sue OSHA again—and will prevail again,” said the organization.

Not only has the pandemic greatly affected small businesses, but the vaccine mandate would have put more pressure on the industry. Businesses expected to lose between 2% and 8% of their employees due to the mandate, reported Fortune.

JCN describes itself as a nonpartisan organization with a mission “to educate employees of Main Street America, so we can protect the 85 million people who depend on the success of small businesses.” It was founded by pro-free enterprise entrepreneurs such as The Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus who believe government policies are obstructing economic freedom. 

Ortiz, who has served as the President and CEO of JCN since Jan. 2014 is also on the board for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and an advisory board member for Littler's Workplace Policy Institute. 

According to the American Legislative Exchange Council, Ortiz has “testified before legislative committees about the impact of bad government policy on job creation, and speaks frequently to business organizations across the nation about the need for job creators to seize responsibility for defending free enterprise, both in the communities where they live and the communities they've created -- their workplaces.”