The Supreme Court has blocked the mandate for a vaccine against Biden for business


January 13, 2022 – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday overturns President Joe Biden’s mandate for a vaccine for large businesses, but said it could continue as long as the rules are challenged in lower courts.

The vote was 6-3 against the mandate of big business and 5-4 in favor of the mandate of the health worker.

Biden’s proposed vaccine mandate for business covers each company with more than 100 employees. This will require these companies to make sure that employees are either vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19.

In its ruling, most of the court called the plan a “dumb tool.” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration had to enforce the rule, but the court ruled that the mandate was beyond the agency’s remit.

“OSHA has never imposed such a mandate. Nor did Congress. In fact, although Congress has passed significant legislation to address the COVID-19 pandemic, it has refused to adopt any measure similar to what OSHA is promulgating here, “the majority wrote.

The court said the mandate was not “a daily exercise of federal power.” Instead, it is a significant encroachment on the lives – and health – of a huge number of employees. “

Anthony Kreis, a professor of constitutional law at Georgia State University in Atlanta, said the ruling showed that “the court does not understand the unprecedented situation the pandemic has created and unnecessarily limits the government’s capacity to work.”

“It is difficult to imagine a situation that is in dire need of rapid action than an emergency in national health care, which the majority in court does not seem to appreciate.

While the Biden administration argued that COVID-19 was a “professional hazard” and was therefore under OSHA’s power to regulate, the court said it disagreed.

“Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, in most it is not an occupational risk. “COVID-19 can and does be distributed at home, in schools, during sporting events and everywhere else where people gather,” the judges wrote.

This kind of universal risk, they said, “is no different from the day-to-day dangers that everyone faces from crime, air pollution or any number of communicable diseases.”

But in disagreement, Judges Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said COVID-19 was being distributed “indoors, causing harm in almost every workplace.” And in these environments, more than anyone else, people have little control and therefore little risk mitigation capacity. “

This means, the minority said, that COVID-19 “is a threat in working conditions”.

OSHA, they said, has a mandate to “protect employees” from “serious danger” from “new dangers” or exposure to harmful agents. COVID-19 definitely qualifies as such.

“The court order is seriously misapplying the applicable legal standards,” the disagreement said. “And in doing so, it hinders the federal government’s ability to counter the incomparable threat that COVID-19 poses to workers in our nation.

This is an evolving story. Please come back for updates.



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