Plaintiffs argue the law infringes on state sovereignty.
QUICK FACTS:
- The states of Texas and Oklahoma filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over a regulation that gives the World Health Organization (WHO) the “authority to invoke emergency health powers in the United States,” threatening state sovereignty.
- The plaintiffs previously requested the law to be repealed through a petition, but were rejected by the HHS without providing a “rational explanation for keeping an unlawful regulation in federal law.”
- “The Biden Administration’s defense of granting the WHO the authority to determine when the federal government ought to violate the rights of our citizens is alarming to say the least, and it must not be allowed to stand,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
- “Absolutely no foreign power should have the ability to exert police powers over Texas or any other state, and that is especially true for a foreign entity with as troubled of a history as the WHO,” AG Paxton added.
- President of American First Legal Stephen Miller, representing Texas in the suit, argued that elites are “prepared to use the pretext of a healthcare emergency to impose draconian and totalitarian controls over the lives of our people.”
- “We are proud and honored to represent the great State of Texas and to work with courageous patriot Attorney General Ken Paxton in filing this lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services for unlawfully relinquishing America’s national sovereignty to the World Health Organization,” Miller stated.
THE LAW IN QUESTION:
- The Texas suit is based on a 2017 law that defined the term “public health emergency.”
- That law defined the term three different ways: a communicable disease event as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a disease event as determined by the HHS, and a disease event as determined by the WHO.
- The WHO, however, lists qualifications for a “public health emergency” in accordance with the International Health Regulations [IHR].
- HHS claimed they would not abide by the WHO for public health crises due to violations of U.S. sovereignty and would instead “continue to make its own independent decisions” of what constitutes a health crisis.
- The plaintiffs assert that despite HHS’s claims to make health decisions independent of the WHO, “HHS proceeded to finalize a rule containing those very definitions [provided by the WHO], without change or alteration.”
BACKGROUND:
- Negotiations are taking place for a WHO Pandemic Treaty that would encourage a global consensus among nations preparing responses to future health crises.
- Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò claimed that any country considering entering the treaty would be sacrificing its sovereignty, resulting in a “crime of high treason.”
- “If these resolutions are approved by a majority, the WHO will have exclusive international authority in the case of a pandemic to impose all the rules, including quarantines, lockdowns, obligatory vaccinations and vaccine passports,” Viganò wrote in a memo.
