By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The case Kansas is involved in regarding the OSHA vaccine mandate is the one that will go forward, according to Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
"This will be one of those cases that, looking back on it, will appear in a civil procedure book at some point in law school because of all the strange procedural machinations," Schmidt said. "Here's the bottom line. We filed a case in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. These types of cases you file directly in the appeals court, which is unusual. We joined with another group of states and that case has been on file now for a couple of weeks and is moving along. Slowly, but it's moving."
The goal is to put civil actions with the same question before one court for efficiency purposes.
"Nothing changes for Kansas," Schmidt said. "We are still where we are, making the same arguments we've been making from the start. Everybody else is now coming to us. It will be up to the court in Cincinnati to sort this out."
Obviously, with an issue of this magnitude, the appellate court isn't likely where it will end.
"I do think that these cases are likely to reach the Supreme Court, at least some of them, and perhaps rather quickly," Schmidt said. "There are different mandates that the Biden administration has ordered. There's not one single mandate. There are several different ones. They're not identical. They have different requirements, one from the other, and they apply to different groups of Americans, one from the other."
It's likely not going to come down to one major decision, as appellate courts tend to rule in nuanced ways when they have that option.