Keeping Education Accessible and COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools

This order directs federal agencies to identify any schools or educational programs at any level, from elementary to college, that are recipients of discretionary federal funds and which require participants to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The order directs agencies to rescind, wherever possible, funds that have gone to such schools, and to prevent further funds from flowing to them. Given that there do not appear to be any K-12 public schools and very few colleges that require students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and that the bulk of federal education funds are based on statutory authorizations that do not afford great executive branch discretion, this order does not appear likely to alter many practices at present.

 What to watch: If there were to be a resurgence of efforts by educational institutions to impose COVID-19 vaccine policies on students, federal agencies might interpret this order to give them greater latitude than is warranted by law to place conditions on discretionary funds that don’t pertain to the underlying purposes for which Congress designated them.

Keeping Education Accessible and Ending Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools