by Kerry Dougherty
Well, what do you know.
In their eagerness to flex their authoritarian muscles, Virginia Beach Public School officials made fools of themselves this week.
On Tuesday evening, Human Resources fired off a stern email to all workers informing them that December 6th would be Show-Us-Your-Papers Day. By that date every school employee will be required to complete a “VBCPS Employee Vaccination Status Questionnaire” showing proof that they were vaccinated against COVID.
Unvaxxed employees will be forced to submit to a weekly test.
There is no mention of what happens to employees who refuse to cooperate. That will be interesting, given the huge staffing shortages. Stay tuned.
The reason for the urgency?
“On Nov. 5, 2021, the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued an emergency temporary standard requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccination or provide proof of a weekly negative test. This mandate is currently under review in the federal court system therefore, the start date for compliance is unclear.
However, should this ETS be enacted in Virginia, the turnaround time to develop structures that will allow VBCPS to comply is simply too short to wait for the outcome of any court decisions…”
And that’s how Show-Us-Your-Papers Day was born.
It’s unclear where this imperious order originated. There is no name on it and School Board Member Vicky Manning told listeners on the “Kerry and Mike Show” Wednesday morning that the school board did not vote on the matter. In fact, she found out about the show-us-your-papers deadline on Facebook.
Great.
Less than 12 hours after the Beach issued this edict, OSHA announced that it was tabling its mandates and “suspending activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS.”
In short, the federal agency got slapped around badly by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week, which issued a blistering opinion that OSHA had far exceeded its authority with the sweeping vaccine mandates. A stay was put in place for the entire country. So OSHA cannot enforce the order.
Lawsuits opposed to the mandates have been pouring in from across the nation and all cases will now be heard in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, where Justice Brett Kavanaugh is assigned.
Am I the only one relieved it isn’t a Justice Merrick Garland — a hopeless partisan — overseeing these cases?
As unintelligent as Joe Biden is, even the president knows that vaccine mandates from an unelected federal agency are almost certainly unconstitutional. In fact, he and others said so earlier this year. Watch this clip from “Tucker Carlson Tonight” for a montage of Biden administration officials declaring that they can’t do what they did.
Biden and company were right, for once. OSHA can’t compel workers to get a vaccine. The courts will strike it down and millions of workers will be able to keep their jobs.
Then again, maybe the Biden administration was bluffing with this order. Perhaps they knew it was unconstitutional, but wanted to see just how many entities would obediently click their heels and follow orders.
It’s embarrassing that Virginia Beach schools are on that list.
UPDATE: School employees woke up Thursday morning to find emails sent overnight retracting the show-us-your-papers order, with a warning that if the courts side with OSHA it will be reactivated.
This column has been republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.