Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reinstated the administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers, but the ruling is not effective immediately. This week, the DOJ is pushing the federal court to expedite certain processes to allow the government to reinstate the vaccination requirements more quickly for all federal workers and contractors.

In September 2021, President Biden signed an executive order that required all federal employees and federal contractors to be vaccinated against COVID-19. This executive order also directed OSHA and CMS to institute vaccine requirements for large private employers and certain healthcare workers, respectively. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court struck down OSHA’s vaccine requirements for large employers but upheld the CMS vaccine mandate for certain healthcare workers.

The vaccine mandate for federal workers, however, never made it to the Supreme Court. On January 21, Judge Jeffrey Brown of the Southern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction on the mandate for federal employees; Judge Brown said in his opinion that, while the president “has broad authority to regulate executive branch employment policies, the vaccine mandate is not an employment regulation.” In issuing the injunction, Brown cited the Supreme Court’s opinion in the OSHA case regarding the vaccine requirements for private employers

On April 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overruled Brown’s decision that had paused the mandate. The court ruled 2-1 that the lower court did not have proper jurisdiction to block the mandate in the first place. However, a “buffer period” remains in place before the ruling can take effect, which prevents the federal government from moving forward with its suspensions and firings of employees who have failed to either get the vaccine or declined to request a medical or religious exemption. Additionally, the plaintiffs in this specific vaccine mandate challenge – Feds for Medical Freedom and a union of DHS employees – have requested a rehearing from the full panel of Fifth Circuit, delaying the effective date of the ruling even further. The DOJ requested that the appeals court “stay “the nationwide injunction the lower court issued in January or move up the date that its order takes effect.

While 98 percent of the federal workforce is fully vaccinated, agencies are still eager to move forward with enforcing the requirements on the tens of thousands of workers who have failed to comply. Most federal agencies planned to bring employees back to their offices in-person in April or May and had hoped to ensure all non-exempted workers were vaccinated as they did so. The White House has estimated it will spend up to an extra $5 million per week the injunction is in place on testing unvaccinated employees for COVID-19.