(LifeSiteNews) — Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed an executive order on Monday meant to help with legal challenges to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.
The new federal vaccine mandates, including on government contractors and private businesses with more than 100 employees, “rest on dubious grounds” and “constitute significant federal overreach,” Gov. Ivery wrote in her order.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has yet to finalize its Emergency Temporary Standard for private employers.
Alabama’s chief executive directed all state agencies to ignore President Biden’s mandates and “cooperate to the fullest extent possible” with Attorney General Steve Marshall. It also directs all state entities to avoid including a vaccine mandate in agreements with contractors.
The executive order does not directly prevent companies in Alabama from implementing jab requirements but is meant to aid in legal battles with the Biden administration.
“If the federal government presses on with these new federal mandates, then the Biden White House has once again failed the American people,” Gov. Ivey said in an accompanying news release. “As I have stated, no doubt, this will be challenged in federal courts. I am already working in concert with Attorney General Steve Marshall, because Alabama is standing firm in this fight.”
“This latest move by the federal government is what I believe is an illegal overreach, and I am confident we will win the battle in the courts,” Ivey said.
“A state law in response to President Biden is not enough. The courts are where this will be resolved. Today is one step in this fight but certainly not the last,” she added.
At least some Alabama employees of federal contractors may welcome the news.
United Launch Alliance manufactures rockets for the federal government, and its workers are covered by one of Biden’s jab requirements.
“A group of workers at a Decatur rocket plant are protesting the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate, saying their religious and medical exemption requests are being denied,” AL.com reported Tuesday.
“I’m sick and tired of being walked on,” Hunter Creger, a United Launch employee and Catholic, told WAFF. His religious exemption request from being forced to take the abortion-tainted jabs was denied, leading him to participate in a walkout.
“I’m an American, my family has fought for this country. It feels like a birthright has been taken from me,” Creger said.
Gov. Ivey joined South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and other Republican governors who have opposed state legislation or state directives that would prohibit businesses from mandating vaccines for employees.
She criticized legislation to protect workers from forced jabs by saying it would put employers in a “bad position.”
One proposal that will be presented at a special session that starts Thursday is a simple three-page bill that allows employees and their families to sue employers if they are forced to get inoculated and suffer adverse reactions.
Another bill, yet to be posted, “prohibits employers from discriminating against employees in personnel-related decisions based on immunization status,” according to AL.com. It effectively bars vaccine mandates.
Montana and Texas both have laws prohibiting private jab mandates.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wants to sign legislation at an upcoming session that will protect workers from jab requirements.
“Your right to earn a living should not be contingent on COVID shots,” DeSantis said.
“If someone was forced by their employer to receive a COVID vaccine and had an adverse reaction, that business should be liable since it wasn’t an individual choice,” the Republican governor said October 21.
“It’s not a free choice if you say ‘get a shot or lose your job’ … that’s not a free choice for a lot of people because their livelihood is hanging in the balance,” he added.