A federal appeals court late Friday upheld its stay of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for larger businesses, saying it leaves workers with a choice between “their jobs and their jabs.”

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals put the Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration rule requiring employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or tests negative for the coronavirus at least once a week on hold pending a decision on a permanent injunction.

The judges barred OSHA from taking steps to implement or enforce the mandate until a further court order.

In a scathing opinion, the court found that OSHA’s emergency temporary standard issued earlier this month raises “serious constitutional concern.” The rule runs afoul of the law from which OSHA draws its power and likely violates constitutional freedoms, the judges wrote.

The mandate threatens to “substantially burden the liberty interests of reluctant individual recipients put to a choice between their job(s) and their jab(s),” according to the court.

“On the dubious assumption that the mandate does pass constitutional muster — which we need not decide today — it is nonetheless fatally flawed on its own terms,” the judges wrote.

Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah and businesses and religious organizations in some of those states sued the Department of Labor and OSHA over the vaccination rule. They argue the rule is unconstitutional and President Joe Biden, wanting to increase vaccinations, ordered OSHA to create a “novel work-around” of federal law.

The 5th Circuit Court, one of the most conservative in the country, issued an emergency stay last Friday, a day after the lawsuit was filed.