A Texas judge blocked the Biden administration from imposing a COVID-19 vaccine injunction on large U.S. companies

According to CNET, a federal judge in Texas blocked u.S. President Joe Biden's mandatory requirement that employees at large corporations be vaccinated against COVID-19. Friday's ruling comes latest in a blow to the Biden administration's efforts to increase vaccination rates.

The ruling comes after the U.S. Supreme Court last week blocked a government injunction to a COVID-19 vaccine or testing for businesses with 100 or more workers, a task limited to federal workers.

Judge Jeffrey Brown said friday in a 20-page opinion and order that Biden's executive order requiring federal workers to be vaccinated exceeded the president's authority.

Brown writes: "This is ... On whether the president can, without a congressional opinion, make a big splash and require millions of federal employees to undergo medical procedures as a condition of their employment. Based on the current state of law just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, this is a bridge that is too far away. ”

Biden issued an executive order in September requiring federal executives and federal contractors to vaccinate against COVID-19. The deadline for vaccination is November 22.

On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said 98 percent of federal workers had been vaccinated, CNBC reported. Psaki added: "We have confidence in our legal authority here. ”

According to the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion last week, the initial injunction against businesses with 100 or more employees was issued by the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and will cover about 84 million employees.

Before it went into effect, Louisiana, Texas, Utah, South Carolina and Mississippi, along with businesses and religious and advocacy organizations, applied for a permanent injunction against the injunction, which was temporarily blocked by a federal appeals panel in Louisiana in November and then reinstated after a ruling by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati in December.

The Supreme Court last week voted 6-3 to block the White House from enforcing vaccine injunctions against big U.S. companies, while they voted 5-4 to support mandatory vaccinations for healthcare workers.

The ruling comes at a time when COVID-19 cases are rapidly increasing across the United States due to the emergence of the highly contagious Omiljung variant. According to Johns Hopkins University's COVID Tracking Digital Tool on Friday, the total number of cases in the U.S. in the current 28 days is about 17.5 million.

The Biden administration has applied to appeal the ruling. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment.