JACKSON (WNE) — Gov. Mark Gordon has signed the sole bill to emerge from the Wyoming Legislature’s special session intended to fight the Biden administration’s federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The governor put pen to paper as he engages in a number of lawsuits against various aspects of the federal mandate: one against requirements on federal contractors and contracted employees, one against requiring vaccines in private businesses with more than 100 employees, and one against an edict that would generally require health care workers to get inoculated.

Gordon’s office was quick to highlight the legal challenges his administration is already pursuing in a Friday press release, and he was critical of the cost of the special session: $233,000.

“This bill confirms the Legislature’s support for the executive branch’s previously expressed determination to fight federal overreach in the courts,” Gordon said in the press release. “I thank the Legislature for recognizing their distinct constitutional responsibility as appropriators in forwarding resources to support this endeavor.”

House Bill 1002, which Gordon signed, appropriates $4 million for legal challenges to federal vaccine mandates and includes a strongly worded resolution citing the legal rights of Wyoming to defy the mandate.

It also states, “no public entity shall enforce any mandate or standard of the federal government, whether emergency, temporary or permanent, that requires an employer to ensure or mandate that an employee shall receive a COVID-19 vaccination.” 

Those provisions barring enforcement of the mandate are nullified once the federal mandate takes effect, but they can be enforced if a court puts a stay on the mandate or the mandate is repealed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recenty ordered OSHA to stop enforcing the mandate on private employers for the time being.