The Supreme Court’s decision blocking the Biden administration’s private-sector vaccination regime was viewed positively by legal experts consulted by The Epoch Times but the other decision allowing the mandate requiring health care workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 received a mixed reception.
The rulings came mid-afternoon on Jan. 13 after the high court heard oral arguments on Jan. 7 about the two separate mandates on an emergency basis. An array of business groups, along with Ohio, Missouri, Louisiana, and two dozen other states, asked for the federal mandates to be blocked.
The ruling allowing compulsory vaccination of health care workers is a “terrible” decision that is “going to result in people dying,” Robert Henneke of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to block the mandate issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), finding the challenge to it was likely to succeed. The rule forced employers with at least 100 employees –or most of the nation’s private workforce— to subject their employees to vaccinations aimed at preventing COVID-19 or to regular testing to detect it.
The decision split cleanly along partisan lines.
All Republican appointees on the high court–Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—were in the majority in the court’s opinion in National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) v. Department of Labor.
“Administrative agencies are creatures of statute” and “possess only the authority that Congress has provided,” the majority opinion states. “The Secretary has ordered 84 million Americans to either obtain a COVID–19 vaccine or undergo weekly medical testing at their own expense. This is no ‘everyday exercise of federal power.’ It is instead a significant encroachment into the lives—and health—of a vast number of employees.”
“Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID-19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather,” the opinion continues.
All the Democratic appointees–Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—would have allowed the mandate to go forward. Their dissenting opinion states that the court “seriously misapplies the applicable legal standards” and “stymies the Federal Government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID–19 poses to our Nation’s workers.”
