The U.S. Supreme Court halts the Biden administration's enforcement to require all large corporations with more than 100 employees to be vaccinated, or partake in mandatory weekly COVID testing and wear a mask on site.
However, in a separate ruling, the Supreme Court upheld a smaller piece of regulation that requires health care workers, both in hospital and nursing facilities, to be fully vaccinated during employment. With this separate decision going into effect, the Biden administration predicts that it will cover up to 17 million people employed within the health care industry. Conservative figures Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined the liberal justices on this decision.
The lost ruling from the Biden administration was proposed after the Occupational Safety Health Act of 1970, which was designed to protect employed staff from any toxins that would endanger a workplace. However, the majority of Supreme Court justices say that the current pandemic has not reached the point where vaccinations must be mandatory and authorized in the workplace.
“It is telling that OSHA, in its half-century of existence, has never before adopted a broad public health regulation of this kind — addressing a threat that is untethered, in any causal sense, from the workplace… Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly. Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category.” said conservatives on the court through an unsigned opinion.
The three liberal justices from Thursday's ruling responded to the majority decision, saying that this ruling is an unparalleled threat to employees working throughout the United States.
“… stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID–19 poses to our nation’s workers. Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the court displaces the judgments of the government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies.” said the three liberal justices.
President Biden has expressed his disappointment on Thursday's decision but says that states and workplaces should step forward and provide some type of requirements to keep employees and customers safe in their communities.
"The Court has ruled that my administration cannot use the authority granted to it by Congress to require this measure, but that does not stop me from using my voice as President to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans’ health and economy.” President Biden said on Thursday.
