A December 17 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit will effectively maintain a Georgia federal district court’s nationwide stay of the federal contractor vaccine mandate until at least January 24, 2022. The Eleventh Circuit denied a Biden Administration request to immediately remove the nationwide stay and instead requested that the parties to the lawsuit fully brief their arguments on the stay by January 24. The argument here does not go to the merits of the mandate, but instead as to whether the existing freeze of the mandate should be maintained or not. As such, litigation is far from over in this particular case and those throughout the country, including by AGC in a federal court in Texas.
Even as the association challenges the administration’s two coronavirus vaccine mandates, it continues to work to encourage all construction workers to get vaccinated. AGC recently released a series of public service ads featuring construction workers who nearly died from the virus, urging their peers to get vaccinated. AGC has been urging its members to show the videos to all their workers and is also placing ads featuring the videos in key construction markets. AGC also created a vaccine toolkit for the industry.