Natelson: No Presidential Authority for a Vaccine Mandate
When it comes to the Constitution, former University of Montana Constitutional Law Professor Rob Natelson says, "You won’t find anything remotely resembling presidential authority to impose a vaccination mandate.”
Natelson is now a senior fellow in Constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute, and joined us on Monday's "Montana Talks with Aaron Flint." This, as nearly one third of firefighters in the New York Fire Department (NYFD) were reportedly refusing to comply with the City of New York's vaccine mandate, according to the UK Daily Mail.
Natelson: Let me just state that at the beginning. I'm not an anti vaxxer. I've been vaccinated myself. That was a decision I made for myself and my wife made for herself, but that doesn't mean I want to impose it on everybody else. Okay. There is no power in the Constitution given to the federal government to deal with healthcare issues. I realized the federal government has gotten very deeply into it, but even the great Chief Justice John Marshall, an advocate of a strong federal government, affirmed this is not an area for the federal government. That's point number one. Point number two, vax mandate. We encountered a mandate not that long ago. Another one, it involved Obamacare. And the Supreme Court held that it was not supported by the commerce power, it was not supported by the Necessary and Proper Clause. And the only way they upheld it was because it was attached to a tax. Well the vaccination mandate is not attached to a tax, and it is not the kind of economic activity that the federal government has traditionally been able to regulate under its commerce power. So I think there's a real question, real doubt, as to the federal government's ability to impose mandate.
What about mandates at the state and local level?
Listen to the full audio with Rob Natelson below for the answer.
Click here to read Natelson's open letter to the president.