Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday pledged to contest the Biden administration’s employer coronavirus vaccine mandate in court, saying that he is “offended” it could wind up taking away jobs.
“Let’s not have Biden come in and effectively take away — threaten to take away — the jobs of people who have been working hard throughout this entire pandemic,” DeSantis said during a Thursday news conference on monoclonal antibody treatments in Fort Myers. “I am offended that a police officer could potentially lose their job.”
DeSantis’s comments come in response to a mandate Biden issued last month, calling for private businesses with 100 workers or more to require employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. He also called for federal employees and those employed by health care providers to follow similar requirements.
“We have a responsibility at the state level to do whatever we need to do to protect Floridians from mandates that could result in them losing their jobs. We have to protect the jobs of Floridians,” DeSantis said on Thursday.
The governor said during the conference that any lawsuits the state files against the federal mandates will be made in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“I just think its fundamentally wrong to be taking people’s jobs away particularly given the situation that we see ourselves facing with the economy where you need people in a lot of these key areas,” he said referencing essential workers and those who have remained on the front lines of the pandemic. “What’s going to happen with these hospitals if these mandates are allowed to go in, where they already need more nurses?”
The White House on Tuesday pushed back on GOP governors such as DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott seeking to ban vaccine mandates in their states.
“Governor Abbott’s executive order banning mandates and, I would also note, the announcement by Gov. DeSantis this morning essentially banning the implementation of mandates, fit a familiar pattern that we’ve seen of putting politics ahead of public health,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at the time.