Washington, Jan. 14 (BUS): The Supreme Court has halted a major campaign by the Biden administration to boost the nation’s coronavirus vaccination rate, a requirement that employees of major corporations get a vaccine or get tested regularly and wear a mask on a profession.
At the same time, the court is allowing the administration to move forward with mandating a vaccine for most health care workers in the United States. Thursday’s court orders came during a spike in coronavirus cases caused by the omicron variant, according to the Associated Press.
The court’s conservative majority concluded that the administration had exceeded its authority by seeking to impose a vaccine rule or Occupational Safety and Health Administration testing on US companies with at least 100 employees.
More than 80 million people could have been affected, and OSHA estimated that the rule would save 6,500 lives and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations over six months.
In opposition, the tribunal’s three liberals argued that it was the court that overstepped its bounds by replacing its ruling with that of health experts.
“The Court is acting outside its jurisdiction and without legal basis, superseding judgments issued by government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies,” Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor wrote in joint dissent.
President Joe Biden said he was “disappointed that the Supreme Court chose to block life-saving common-sense requirements for employees in large corporations that rest squarely on both science and law.”
Biden called on companies to set their own vaccination requirements, noting that a third of Fortune 100 companies have already done so.
When drafting the OSHA rule, White House officials always anticipated legal challenges—and some in particular had doubts that it could withstand them.
However, management still views the rule as a success in actually getting millions of people to get vaccinated and encouraging private companies to implement their own requirements that are not affected by legal challenge.
OSHA’s regulation was initially blocked by a federal appeals court in New Orleans, then the Federal Appeals Commission in Cincinnati allowed it to go into effect.
Both rules were challenged by Republican-led states. In addition, business groups have attacked OSHA’s emergency regulation as being too costly and likely to cause workers to leave their jobs at a time when it is difficult to find new employees.
The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail group, called the Supreme Court’s decision a “major victory for employers.”
The mandate for the vaccine, which the court will allow to be enforced nationwide, has been rescinded by 5-4 votes, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the Liberals to form a majority.
The mandate covers nearly all health care workers in the state, and applies to providers who receive federal Medicare or Medicaid funding. It affects 10.4 million workers in 76,000 health care facilities as well as home health care providers. The rule has medical and religious exceptions.
More than 208 million Americans, 62.7% of the population, have been fully vaccinated, and more than a third of them have received booster shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The court remains closed to the public, and lawyers and journalists are required to obtain negative test results before being allowed into the courtroom to plead, although vaccinations are not required.
A separate vaccine mandate for federal contractors, pending after it was blocked by lower courts, has not been considered by the Supreme Court.
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