By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is still waiting to see what action needs to be taken regarding vaccine mandates from the Biden administration.
"The President gave a speech, but he hasn't actually done anything legally yet," Schmidt said Saturday. "He has to act. He has to write something down. There has to be a regulation actually adopted, or at least proposed, in order for us to legally challenge it. We've drawn the line in the sand. It's clear he's going to proceed. Once he does, we're going to file an action. We're going to try to get a court to block it. We don't think that the federal government, a government of limited, enumerated powers, has the authority to order Americans to get a vaccine, especially not tens of millions of Americans in a very general sense like this."
The legal precedent for a vaccine mandate is from a state, not the federal government.
"Something very fundamental in our system of federal and state government is that there are different powers at different levels of government," Schmidt said. "It's something you learned in civics class, but sometimes it gets lost in the fog of the issue of the day. States have a general police power. The federal government does not. If the Constitution doesn't grant a power to the federal government, it does not have it. In this case, we don't see a legal basis for the President's order."
Because the Biden administration hasn't started the clock on any legal action by writing the policy, it's hard to know what sort of timeline any final decision might have.