Can CDC use no eviction executive order to mandate vaccinations

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Prior to last September, when the CDC first ordered landlords to continue housing tenants who claim they cannot afford to pay their rent, that gloss would have been uncontroversial. But the eviction moratorium, which the CDC recently extended until the end of July, is based on a reading of the Public Health Service Act that could easily encompass a vaccine mandate. That law authorizes the secretary of health and human services to "make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary" to prevent the interstate spread of "communicable diseases." A regulation delegates that authority to the CDC, which argues that it justifies overriding rental contracts across the country, because evicted tenants might become homeless or move in with other people, thereby increasing the risk of virus transmission. The Biden administration has endorsed that position while defending the moratorium against challenges by landlords and property managers. Congress granted the Secretary the 'broad authority to make and enforce' any regulations that 'in his judgment are necessary to prevent the spread of disease' across states or from foreign countries." If the indirect and disputed relationship between evictions and COVID-19 transmission was enough to justify the CDC's moratorium, the direct and indisputable relationship between inoculation and disease control surely would be enough to justify a CDC order requiring vaccination. The plaintiffs in the case that Friedrich heard, Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS, made that point when they asked the Supreme Court to lift a stay on her order blocking enforcement of the eviction moratorium. The CDC, they noted, believes the Public Health Service Act "bestowed upon it the unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of communicable disease—whether eviction moratoria, worship limits, nationwide lockdowns, school closures, or vaccine mandates." In its response, the Biden administration said the Court "need not consider whether [the statute] would authorize" measures "such as 'vaccine mandates.'" But given the vast authority claimed by the CDC, that possibility is completely plausible and definitely worth considering.

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