Inept & Grotesque Understanding of the U.S. Constitution

A corporation unable to retain its employees who perform the transactions required to collect its revenue, cannot pay its debt obligations and, therefore, is considered to be insolvent and will ultimately end in dissolution.

Now, what if said corporation is required to terminate its employees who do not comply with their new policies but before they can terminate, the corporation is legally obligated to adjudicate the termination in the spirit of due process and provide paid leave to the employees throughout the process?

This could easily be the case for the United States federal government due to the recent sweeping COVID-19 vaccine mandates made this month by the Biden Administration, where federal employees are now mandated to receive the COVID-19 vaccination or face disciplinary action that could result in termination of their employment.

Building on the President’s announcement in July, Biden signed an Executive Order (EO) this month to take those actions a step further and require all federal executive branch workers to be vaccinated. The President also signed an Executive Order directing that this standard be extended to employees of contractors that do business with the federal government which is said to ultimately cover 2.5 million people.

The Safer Federal Workforce Task Force (Task Force), established by EO 13991 of January 20, 2021, issued guidance last month (August) that recommended employees who refuse to get shots be placed on administrative leave, a form of paid time off used widely for short-term absences while employee's adjudicate the decisions of the agencies to terminate their employment.

This process is already time consuming and tedious. By adding few hundred thousand to the list of employees wishing to adjudicate, and you have yourself a backlog nightmare!

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is responsible for promulgating regulations that can limit the use of paid time off, however, no regulations exist as to what to do with these particular employees who refuse the vaccine. Instead, the OPM rule book allows for employees to remain on paid leave while they pursue adjudication for termination or challenge a demotion and/or punishment.

As a federal government employee, what’s the incentive for someone to get vaccinated, when they could collect a pay check from the comfort of their living room sofa?

"The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB Board) is a quasi-judicial independent agency in the executive branch charged with protecting federal employees against improper employment-related actions. The Board works to ensure, for example, that federal agencies avoid taking arbitrary action against employees, exhibiting favoritism, or engaging in reprisals against whistleblowers. The MSPB also aims to promote an effective federal workforce free of certain types of discrimination and other prohibited personnel practices.

The MSPB operates like a tribunal and maintains procedures for conducting hearings, examining evidence, and rendering decisions. Most cases the MSPB Board reviews are federal employee appeals of adverse actions, including those related to removal or suspension of employment. When the MSPB determines that a federal employee has been subject to an improper adverse action, the Board can issue orders that compel agencies to reverse these actions and, depending upon the particular agency action in question, may order relief, including reinstatement, backpay, and attorney’s fees.

Since March 2019, the Board has lacked sitting members. Lack of a quorum prevents the Board from performing some of its review functions, including issuing final decisions in cases when an initial decision issued by an administrative judge has been appealed to the full Board. As a result, a significant case backlog has developed.' (Congressional Research Service, 2019)

But, before a federal employee can petition the MSPB Board for review of their case, they must first have a legally sound grievance and argument which, lucky for them, is plentiful but still uncertain as the application of existing laws in the pandemic context has yet to be litigated.

The Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 require individualized assessments of whether an accommodation must be granted to a particular employee, making it difficult to predict how managers, agencies, and courts will apply them.

In addition, it may be hard for federal employers to make some of the required decisions and evaluations quickly because the statutes require an interactive process that allows for back-and-forth communication, input from medical providers, and case-specific analysis.

Courts have yet to assess mandatory vaccine requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have occasionally reviewed challenges to mandatory flu vaccination requirements under civil rights statutes. However, judges have looked more favorably on an employee’s requests in the past.

The Third Circuit concluded that severe anxiety over an injection might qualify as a disability, at least in the case of a nurse who refused a tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis vaccine. The court held that a plaintiff had sufficiently raised an ADA claim, given that she proposed wearing a mask instead of getting a vaccine and her employer rejected the offer without proposing any alternative. [Ruggiero v. Mount Nittany Medical Center (3rd Circuit, 2018)]

Because federal employees are entitled to due process, if there was a major backlog generated out of a massive influx to adjudicate any discipline or termination of an employee who doesn't comply with the vaccine mandate, this would create a fiscal and constitutional dilemma for the federal government -- paying employees for time off while juggling their commitment to keep others safe from the unvaccinated.

The lack of bandwidth to review requests for religious exemptions along with the required record-keeping of employees' vaccine status alone has raised concerns. The vaccine mandate EO offers few details, but the Task Force said it plans to issue guidance to agencies within the next week.

Meanwhile, in a press conference last week, "circle back" press secretary, Jen Psaki, said

"There will be limited exceptions for legally recognized reasons, such as disability or religious objections....If a federal worker fails to comply, they will go through the standard HR process, which includes counseling, and face disciplinary action — face progressive disciplinary action."

How she has come to the conclusion on the administration's ability to limit "exceptions for legally recognized reasons, such as disability or religious objections" is beyond the Terror of the Woods and making a statement like this assumes she understands the ADA and the Civil Rights Act -- clearly, she doesn't.

The fact that the Biden Administration, as recently as this July announced A Proclamation on Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 2021 is the icing on this "tone-deaf" cake. He even goes as far to state that "[his] Administration is also committed to advancing the rights of people with disabilities in the workplace to support economic self-sufficiency."

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP!

The first coronavirus plan for most federal employees, announced at the end of July, required employees to “attest” to their status and threatened discipline only if someone was discovered to have lied about their vaccination status. But little was done to push that plan along and has failed miserably.

Setting the Biden Administration's inept and grotesque understanding of the Constitution, ADA and the Civil Rights Act, aside, there is still the rising $28.1 trillion national debt.

While some claim the national debt is manageable, most are worried that excessive government debt levels can impact economic stability.

If there is a massive exodus of federal employees who refuse to take the vaccine and instead opt to collect a pay check from home, how will the federal government collect its various revenue streams -- like, let's say for fun, the Internal Revenue Service?

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Remember, government doesn't have money, they have YOUR MONEY. In order to have your money, they must collect it which is performed through a transaction conducted by a federal employee.

Resource by Terror of the Woods leaves you with this question:

Would you gamble on a $28.1 trillion deficit or a virus with a 99.7% survival rate...this is a rhetorical question.