Arizona's Federal District Court Preliminarily Enjoins Federal Contractor Vaccine Mandate

• Published date: 09 February 2022
• Subject Matter: Government, Public Sector, Government Contracts, Procurement & PPP
• Law Firm: Mayer Brown
• Author: Ms Marcia Madsen and Kelyn J. Smith

On January 27, 2022, Judge Michael T. Liburdi for the District of Arizona authored the most recent decision to preliminarily enjoin the federal government's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees of federal contractors and subcontractors. Plaintiffs, including the State of Arizona and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, sought to prevent the federal government and its agencies from enforcing the contractor vaccine mandate.¹ The court observed "four parallel cases involving states' challenges to the Contractor Mandate,"² each of which enjoined the contractor vaccine mandate established under Executive Order (E.O.) 14042. (Brnovich v. Biden, No. CV-21-01568-PHX-MTL, 2022 WL 252396, at *5 (D. Ariz. Jan. 27, 2022).) Expressing skepticism as to whether the vaccine mandate conformed with the president's authority over procurement, the court granted the preliminary injunction blocking the contractor vaccine mandate. (Id. at *29.)

Regarding standing, "[t]he State ha[d] shown that it [wa]s likely to suffer direct injury as a result of the Contractor Mandate." (Id. at *9.) The injury was deemed "imminent and real" as "[d]efendants [we]re not demanding that Arizona agencies agree to incorporate a vaccination clause when their contracts may be up for renewal; instead, [d]efendants [we]re requiring State agencies to agree to modify their contracts now." (Id. at 11.) Judge Liburdi's assessment of standing is notable in its view of the government's contractual autonomy. Here, defendants argued that the contractor mandate was "merely an exercise of the federal government's unrestricted power to determine those with whom it will deal, and to fix the terms and conditions upon which it will enter into contracts." (Id. (quotation marks omitted).) However, Judge Liburdi saw differently:

[A] private entity could require parties with whom it contracts to either vaccinate their workforces or risk losing its business. It may seem odd, then, to preclude the federal government from doing what a private corporation could do. But, despite Defendants' arguments to the contrary, the federal government is not simply another contracting entity. It is both a contractor and a regulator, wielding immense coercive power. And although federal contracts provide the mechanism through which the Contractor Mandate is implemented, the mandate is unquestionably both regulatory and policy-making in character.

(Id.) Ultimately, the court found "[d]efendants' argument that the State has no...