Rules For Thee, Not For Me | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Donna Martinez.



    I get it. President Biden is no different from the rest of us. He's living his life, browsing in a store over a holiday weekend. But based on this photo, published by the New York Post, he's in clear violation of store and local government policy - a 'mask-up' policy Mr. Biden repeatedly promotes.

    The policy set by the clothing and souvenir store on Nantucket's Main Street is in line with the island's mask mandate, which the local Board of Health reportedly reimposed earlier this month due to an uptick in COVID-19 found in the sewer system.

    Normally I'd be inclined to cut the president a break. But it's hard to let this pass considering that Mr. Biden is pushing a vaccine mandate on private businesses with more than 100 employees. From the Wall Street Journal:

    The rules issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration require private-sector employers with 100 or more workers to ensure their employees get fully vaccinated or take a weekly Covid-19 test and wear a mask at work. OSHA can issue fines against companies for noncompliance. The OSHA emergency temporary standard can stay in place for six months before it would need to be codified as a permanent standard that requires rule making.

    The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans earlier this month granted an emergency stay prohibiting enforcement of the rules for now, saying they raised "grave statutory and constitutional issues." The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati was randomly selected on Nov. 17 to take on legal challenges to the mandate, and on Tuesday the Biden administration filed an emergency court motion seeking the immediate reinstatement of the mandate.

    If this mandate is allowed to stand, get ready for what comes next.

    Get ready for the next 'emergency' as defined by whoever wields the power of the federal government mandate. For those who agree with the current president's use of OSHA, what would you think if it was Donald Trump doing the very same thing? What will you think if/when a conservative president uses this OSHA precedent to impose a rule with which you disagree?