AUSTIN, Texas — After more than a year and a half of struggling to survive under the pandemic's economic toll, some Texas businesses are now trying to navigate the Biden administration's vaccine mandate and are concerned it could make it more difficult to find workers during an ongoing labor shortage.

What You Need To Know

  • Texas business owners are caught in a back and forth over vaccine mandates

  • Gov. Greg Abbott has banned vaccine mandates for private companies, while the White House has ordered all private businesses with 100 or more employees to require COVID-19 vaccines or provide biweekly testing

  • A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the White House order, but that case is expected to face more legal hurdles

“It's really been tough,” said Skeeter Miller, who owns the County Line, a popular barbecue chain with six restaurants and about 500 employees.  

Miller has run his restaurants for 46 years. But the past year and a half of the pandemic has been some of the most difficult time in his memory, he said. 

Miller is grateful he managed to keep the County Line restaurants afloat amid mandatory closures last year. Then came the rise of the delta variant and an increase in COVID-19 infections across the country, including Texas. And today, as he and other Texas businesses have just about crawled out from under the economic burden of the pandemic, Miller is struggling with national supply chain issues and labor shortages. 

Then earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced a new order requiring companies with more than 100 employees to either mandate COVID-19 vaccinations or implement regular testing by Jan. 4. That came after a July announcement in which Biden ordered vaccination requirements for federal employees and contractors.

The White House said the announcement was made to jumpstart the country’s lagging vaccination campaign and to stem the spread of the disease.

Within days of Biden’s announcement regarding private company’s vaccine mandates, which would directly affect Miller’s business, Texas joined several other states, businesses and advocacy groups in a lawsuit against the president’s order, arguing it amounted to government overreach.

Add this to the fact that Gov. Greg Abbott had already issued an executive order banning vaccine mandates for Texas private businesses. Failure to comply with the governor’s ban could result in a $1,000 fine.

Private business owners were stuck between violating federal mandates or being fined under the governor’s executive order.

Then over the weekend, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private companies.

The back and forth has left Miller and other Texas business owners on edge, fearing that it’s only a matter of time before the issue takes another turn in what is already an extremely volatile time.

Already, there's been about 250,000 jobs lost and 7,000 restaurants have had to close, Miller said.

Businesses like the County Line are just trying to rebuild again, he said.

"I think the hardest part for us is when you have to close your business,” he said. But at the same time, “you want to make sure that you're taking care of your employees.”

But it's not just the back and forth on the vaccine mandates that has business owners like Miller worried.

A pandemic of the unvaccinated

New data released this week by state health officials revealed that unvaccinated Texans made up the vast majority of COVID-19 cases and deaths this year. Between mid-January and October, 85% of people who died from the virus were unvaccinated in the state. Similarly, 85% of people who tested positive had not received the vaccination.

Unvaccinated Texans were about 20 times more likely to suffer a COVID-19-associated death and 13 times more likely to test positive than people who were fully vaccinated, the data showed. While 70% of the country is fully vaccinated, in Texas, only about 53% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated. 

“Actions announced by the president are designed to save lives and stop the spread of COVID-19,” said White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a press briefing when asked about Biden’s latest mandate order. “Congress empowered OSHA through a law that has been in the books for more than 50 years. So this is an authority that we believe that the Department of Labor has, we are very confident about it, and just to say, this is about keeping people safe in the workplace.”

Still, business owners and advocacy groups disagree.

“This claim of power by the federal government to force Americans to undertake a medical treatment that they would not voluntarily choose to do so, it's chilling. It’s tyrannical,” Robert Henneke, general counsel for the Texas Public Policy Foundation said. “It's overreaching, and it's unprecedented.”

The court’s ruling this week halting the measure is just temporary and is likely to get tied up in the courts as the issue is fully litigated, potentially making it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“Since 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that vaccine requirements are legal, and reaffirmed that in numerous court cases since then, in the context of polio and in smallpox, and others,” said Randy Erben, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “This is not a new controversy. It's just in a different context because of COVID and the controversy that's taken place with regard to the virus in the last few years.”

For Miller, the concern is that even if he provides testing for his employees, the requirement could worsen the labor shortage he’s already experiencing, he said.

“It’s people's choice on what they want to do, and I can't I can't dictate that,” he said. “It's about business for me. If I don't have employees, I can't open my doors. And so, you know, that's the scary part about it. It's out of my control,” Miller said.