Meanwhile, another federal appellate court refused to lift the nationwide stay of the federal contractor vaccine mandate

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Ferris Bueller was on to something there.

In just the past seven days, we had the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals deny a request to have the entire court decide whether to lift the stay of OSHA vaccine-or-test Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) only to have a panel of three judges lift the stay.

Well, two out of three.

During that same seven-day stretch, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put the kibosh on a nationwide injunction of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services healthcare COVID-19 vaccine mandate (the “CMS Rule”). Technically, there are 25 states in which the CMS Rule is effective. However, CMS still has yet to update its website to advise employers in those states what to expect.

Finally, there’s President Biden’s Executive Order mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for employees of certain federal contractors (the “Contactor EO “). Earlier in the month, a federal judge in Georgia entered a nationwide injunction to block the Contactor EO. On Friday, on the same day that the Sixth Circuit lifted the stay of OSHA’s ETS, the Eleventh Circuit denied the government motion to stay the nationwide preliminary injunction of the Contractor EO pending appeal.

The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion is just two pages. Specifically, it denied the government’s motion because the government could not establish that continuing the stay (pending appeal) would irreparably harm it. However, the court did agree to expedite the government’s appeal. Just don’t expect a ruling until late January or early February 2022. Until then, the Contractor EO remains blocked across the country.

(And for good measure, yesterday, a Missouri judge also enjoined the Contractor EO in ten states.)

I’m going to need a bigger scorecard.