Columbus, OH – On Monday, The Buckeye Institute filed its reply brief in the Supreme Court of the United States outlining why an emergency stay is urgently needed in Buckeye’s OSHA vaccine mandate case—Phillips v. OSHA. Oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of an emergency stay of the vaccine mandate are set for Friday, January 7.

“The Buckeye Institute’s clients have clearly demonstrated that they will suffer irreparable and immediate economic harm if the OSHA vaccine mandate is allowed to be enforced,” said Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute and a lead attorney representing Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company and Sixarp LLC against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine mandate. “If the court does not act immediately to halt the vaccine mandate’s implementation, these companies will be compelled to comply with this unlawful requirement and forced to implement expensive policies and practices that will threaten their businesses, expose them to penalties for noncompliance, and cost them qualified, well-trained, good employees at a time when they are already suffering a labor shortage.”

Facing a dire worker shortage, Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company would lose nearly one-fifth of its existing employees if the OSHA vaccine mandate were enforced. Analysis indicates that enforcing this vaccine mandate would cost the company nearly $1 million annually in recruiting, training, additional overtime, and other costs. These costs do not factor in the harm the resulting labor shortage would do to Phillips’s ability to meet its contractual production requirements, which would cost Phillips $25,000 per hour that the purchaser is without the Phillips product.

Sixarp is likewise suffering a labor shortage, with more than 30 open positions at its Grand Rapids and other packaging facilities. As a provider of packaging for products including over-the-counter and prescription pharmaceuticals, Sixarp is a critical component of the U.S. supply chain that is already stretched to its limits, which the vaccine mandate would significantly exacerbate.

The Buckeye Institute was the first to complete filing with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting an emergency stay of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate—Buckeye filed its hard copy materials less than an hour after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s decision came down granting the government’s request to dissolve the existing administrative stay.

Buckeye’s co-counsel in the case are Patrick Strawbridge, Jeffrey M. Harris, and Daniel Shapiro at Consovoy McCarthy PLLC.

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