News
Featured Image
Arizona Attorney General Mark BrnovichYouTube screenshot

Big Tech is censoring us. Subscribe to our email list and bookmark LifeSiteNews.com to continue getting our news.  Subscribe now.

PHOENIX, Arizona (LifeSiteNews) – Arizona launched the first lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s new COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced Tuesday.

The lawsuit, filed against Biden with the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, argues that the mandates violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by “favoring” illegal immigrants, who are exempted from vaccination requirements.

“The federal government cannot force people to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The Biden Administration is once again flouting our laws and precedents to push their radical agenda,” Brnovich, a Republican, said in a press release yesterday. “There can be no serious or scientific discussion about containing the spread of COVID-19 that doesn’t begin at our southern border.”

Biden’s vaccine requirements announced last week strictly mandate COVID vaccination for all federal workers, federal contractors, and healthcare workers whose employers receive funding through Medicare or Medicaid.

Biden also said that his administration will direct every private business with more than 100 employees to require that their workers be “fully vaccinated” or tested weekly through an upcoming rule expected to impact nearly 80 million people.

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden told tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans on Thursday. “This is not about freedom or personal choice.”

At the same time, migrants who illegally cross the U.S. southern border “will not be subject to any vaccination requirements even when released directly into the United States (where most will remain), while roughly a hundred million U.S. citizens will be subject to unprecedented vaccination requirements,” Brnovich’s lawsuit noted. “This reflects an unmistakable — and unconstitutional — brand of favoritism in favor of illegal migrants.”

“Although the precise contours of the federal vaccination mandates are not yet clear, the violation of the Equal Protection Clause is already evident and egregious,” the filing continued.

Illegal border crossings have skyrocketed under the Biden administration to levels unseen in decades, with at least 208,887 migrant encounters reported last month alone, up 317 percent from 2020. Arizona has been particularly hard hit by the crisis, prompting Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to declare a state of emergency in April.

Estimates of illegal migrants who have tested positive for coronavirus after breaching the U.S. border this year range from 20 percent to more than half.

Brnovich also noted that Biden’s chief of staff, Ronald Klain, retweeted a comment describing the forthcoming vaccine mandate for businesses as the “ultimate work-around.” Klain’s “inadvertent admission” “makes all of the administration’s actions constitutionally suspect,” Brnovich’s lawsuit argued.

“Under our Constitution, the President is not a king who can exercise this sort of unbridled power unilaterally,” the attorney general added, slamming the mandate as “one of the greatest infringements upon individual liberties, principles of federalism, and separation of powers ever attempted by any administration in the history of our Republic.”

The Biden administration’s move to impose vaccination requirements on the vast majority of the American workforce – contradicting numerous past statements – has been met with threats of legal action from nearly every Republican governor and state attorney general in the country.

The mandates have already sparked large protests, including in Idaho and California, where thousands rallied against Biden when he visited the two states earlier this week.

A recent poll from the Trafalgar Group reported that most Americans consider Biden’s vaccination rules for private businesses to violate the Constitution.

RELATED: 

Tucson halts COVID vaccine mandate after Arizona threatens funding
DeSantis slams Biden’s vaccine orders, will fine cities that mandate the shot