Workers at a Central Florida aerospace manufacturing facility are protesting an upcoming vaccination mandate for all federal employees and contractors. According to a report from Fox 35, a group of workers at a Melbourne Northrop Grumman plant are protesting the requirement that they get vaccinated.
The workers gathered outside the facility on Monday morning to say that they believe the mandate is "unconstitutional."
For the record, mandatory vaccination has been found constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in repeated instances. In 1905, the court found that local governments were within their rights to enforce vaccine mandates after a Massachusetts pastor fought a mandatory smallpox vaccination. They extended that power to schools in 1922, finding that public schools could deny entry to children whose parents refused to have them vaccinated.
RIGHT NOW: A big group of workers are outside of Northrop Grumman in Melbourne protesting the federal vaccine mandate that’s set to go into effect in December. I’ll have another live report at 8 am on @fox35orlando. pic.twitter.com/JQK27uiQi2
— Stephanie Buffamonte FOX 35 (@StephBuffamonte) October 11, 2021
These precedents will no doubt be discussed ad nauseum while school districts and state governments continue to squabble over requirements to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. President Joe Biden pointed to the precedents in defending his federal requirements.
"Folks, vaccination requirements work and there's nothing new about it. They've been around for decades. We've been living with these requirements throughout our lives," he said. "Students, health care professionals, our troops have been required to see vaccination for everything from polio to measles to mumps to rubella."
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