- Two of the three judges who blocked Biden's vaccine rules are
Trump appointees. - The judges said Biden's mandate was a 'one-size-fits-all sledgehammer.'
Two of the three federal judges enacting a ban on President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate were appointed by his predecessor Donald Trump.
The case is an example of how Trump's sweeping actions to reshape the judiciary while in office may be felt long after the end of his term.
Biden's vaccine rules are being held up on the decision of a three-member panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
On Friday it issued an opinion Friday calling Biden's rules "staggeringly overbroad," and rejected a White House request to let the rules stand while the case is being argued.
The three judges in question who made the call are Kurt Engelhardt, Kyle Duncan, and Edith Jones.
Engelhardt and Duncan were appointed to the court by Trump, while Jones was appointed by Ronald Reagan.
All presidents appoint judges whose legal outlooks mirror their own, but Trump took to the task with particular enthusiasm.
Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, told the Associated Press in 2020 that Trump had "basically done more than any president has done in a single term since [former President Jimmy] Carter to put his stamp on the judiciary."
As well as selecting three Supreme Court justices, Trump also appointed 30% of the judges now sitting in US courts of appeal, the Associated Press reported.
In his single term, Trump appointed more than 230 federal judges with life tenure, some of whom are in their 30s and could conceivably serve into the 2050s.