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How will President Biden's vaccine executive order play out in South Carolina?

We spoke with a USC law professor, who says we are in an interesting situation.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — President Joe Biden on Thursday issued an executive order calling for all businesses with over 100 employees to either mandate their workers to receive the COVID19 vaccine or receive weekly COVID19 testing. 

The expansive rules mandate affects about 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.

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Biden is also requiring vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government — with no option to test out. 

Many lawmakers in South Carolina have shared their disdain for this order and are already working to fight it.

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University of South Carolina law professor Joseph Seiner, who is an expert in labor and employment law, says it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

“There is a serious question about the constitutional nature about this," Seiner told News 19, "but it’s also, given the emergency circumstances of it, it’s also a case of first impression. The question is: ‘Can the White House do this independently or does congress have to do this independently?’ And we’re in unchartered territory with respect to this type of issue. So it will take a while for this to play out in the courts. How long will depend on how quickly they want to move.”

The order applies to companies with over 100 employees, like Prisma Health, which said in part, “Prisma Health is committed to complying with all federal requirements, including those that were recently announced. We are working to understand the full scope of these new requirements and will be implementing the appropriate protocols for compliance as necessary.”

UPS said, “We are reviewing the Executive Order and what it means for UPS and our people. We do not have anything to share right now. UPS continues to urge employees to get vaccinated. Vaccination remains the best way to ensure personal safety, public health and business continuity.”

“I think it’s more about creating a sense of urgency, particularly for larger employers to get this done," Seiner says. "I think it is, in many ways, providing covers for many employers can say ‘look this is the law we have to do this,’ and so it makes the government the bad guy, so to speak.”

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Seiner says South Carolina is an employment-at-will state, so companies have always been able to adopt these types of mandates. “What’s going to happen is those employers who have not currently done that, those larger employers that have 100 or more employees, they’re going to have to get on this pretty quickly or they’re going to have to challenge the law," Seiner told us. 

Companies like Boeing and Segra Park, who say they are still reviewing the order, will need to either jump on board or join the many South Carolina lawmakers who are in opposition of the mandate. “By the time these cases actually get moving in the courts, we’re already at a new phase of this and it changes every week it seems like," Seiner said. 

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