By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas Republican Attorney General candidate Kris Kobach is helping one of his clients, the Alliance for Free Citizens challenge the Biden administration's vaccine mandates, according to an announcement from the group last week. Kobach believes there are several grounds where this is federal overreach.
"It's found pretty squarely in the precedents of the Supreme Court," Kobach said Monday. "It's all about the commerce power of Article 1, Section 8. Most of the powers the federal government has are found in the power to regulate interstate commerce. What the Supreme Court said back in 2012 in the Obamacare case is, the power to regulate commerce does not include the power to make people get involved in commerce when they choose not to buy something. Just like the feds can't force us to purchase health insurance, the feds also can't force us to purchase a vaccine, even if the federal government subsidizes that purchase."
Kobach notes that this extends to people having to buy tests if they choose not to be vaccinated.
"The way the OSHA mandate is phrased, a company can, if it wishes, allow people to test out of it by testing weekly, but that's a problem, too," Kobach said. "Suppose you exercise your First Amendment free exercise of religion right to opt out and say, you know, the vaccine is contrary to your beliefs, well, you have to pay for your own testing every week. The median cost of a COVID test is $148. That adds up to over $7000 a year, paying for those weekly tests."
Since the mandate is being challenged in multiple jurisdictions, there is another step it will go through soon.
"The next step is something that doesn't happen very often in American courts," Kobach said. "It's called the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Whenever an action of a federal agency is simultaneously challenged in multiple circuits of the U.S. courts, then there's a kind of lottery, a drawing from a drum. Each circuit that has a case filed in it has an equal chance of getting it. They are going to consolidate these cases in one of the circuits and we should find that out by the end of this week."
No matter which circuit gets the case, it's a safe bet that the loser will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on this one, anyway.