U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown of the Southern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, ruled that the regime had no authority to require some 3.5 million federal workers and contractors to get the jab if they don't want it.

"The President certainly possesses 'broad statutory authority to regulate executive branch employment policies,'" Brown said in his ruling before referencing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the mandate for private businesses with more than 100 workers.

"But the Supreme Court has expressly held that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate is not an employment regulation. And that means the President was without statutory authority to issue the federal worker mandate," Brown wrote.

"The court notes at the outset that this case is not about whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19 — the court believes they should," the judge said.

"It is not even about the federal government's power, exercised properly, to mandate vaccination of its employees," he said. "It is instead about whether the President can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment. That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far."