The Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers took a hit Dec. 8 when the Senate voted it should be overturned.

All 50 republicans in the Senate, along with Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, voted in support of S.J.Res.29, a resolution sponsored by Mike Braun (R-IN) to show "congressional disapproval" of the vaccine mandate on employers, according to Senate and House websites. The bill was co-sponsored by all other Republican senators and Manchin.

The mandate, announced by Biden in November and issued through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, required employers with 100 or more employees to require all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly. The mandate would impact an estimated 84 million employees across the nation, according to information on the White House website detailing the policy.

Braun took to social media to state that the president should abandon the mandate following the Senate vote. "No one should be forced to choose between getting a vaccine and losing their job,” he wrote in a post to Twitter Dec. 8. “This mandate puts millions of livelihoods and every Americans' freedoms at stake."

Congress has the ability to review and vote to overturn regulatory actions by the executive branch under the expedited procedures set by the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Under the CRA, resolutions cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and the vote requires only a simple majority. The CRA does not include expedited procedures in the House of Representatives, but if the House were to act, the resolution would go to the president for approval or veto.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who survived polio as a child and has said there is "no bigger proponent of vaccination" than he, called Biden’s mandate a "blatant overreach" on his Senate website.

Prior to the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the Senate floor and equated opposing mandates with opposing vaccines. He accused Republicans of trying “to push an anti-science, anti-vaccine" proposal.  

"The science is here," Schumer said. "And what does the science show? The more people get vaccinated, the greater chance we have to eliminate and certainly greatly reduce the virulence and widespreadedness of this disease."

Biden announced the mandate on Nov. 4, but on Nov. 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a motion to stay OSHA's enforcement. Under the court's ruling, OSHA is prohibited from taking additional steps to implement or enforce the vaccine mandate, pending further court orders.