SC attorney general to sue over healthcare worker vaccine mandates

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) - South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said Monday he plans to sue the Biden Administration over vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.

Wilson released a brief statement Monday evening:

President Biden has once again overstepped his legal authority and overreached his power. The President is not above the law. I fully support the rights of our healthcare heroes in opposition to mandatory COVID vaccines. We intend to file suit in the very near future.

Wilson said last week he would also fight the Biden Administration’s private employer vaccine mandate, a rule released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that would require approximately 84 million U.S. workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly.

He called that rule “garbage” and “unconstitutional.”

“Back on September the 9th when the president announced his intent to implement this mandate through the OSHA regulation I got on the phone with 20 plus other AG’s from other states around the country and there was just kind of universal gasping,” Wilson said. “It was just like I can’t believe this administration thinks they can implement a mandate like this.”

A federal court halted the mandate for private employers over the weekend.

“This is not about policy, this is not about vaccines,” Wilson said. “This is about unlawful, unconstitutional usurpation of power by this federal government and by this administration. We have got to draw a line in the sand and not allow them to cross it.”

Wilson said he was not anti-vaccine, and just thinks the government does not have the legal authority without a state power to force people to get a vaccine.

“At the end of the day we have to do things the right way,” Wilson said. “You want to do the right thing, you have to do the right thing the right way. We’re here today to say if the federal government wants to do some type of mandate like this there is an appropriate way to do it.”

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