SCOTUS Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Requirement for Larger Businesses

The U.S. ⚖️Supreme Court has handed down a mixed ruling for President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

In a ruling on Thursday, the court blocked a mandate that businesses with over 100 employees require their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or get tested weekly and wear a mask.

However, it let stand a requirement that mandates that certain health care workers get vaccinated.

An unsigned opinion read, “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.”

Conservatives quickly celebrated the news on Twitter:

In a dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan said, “When we are wise, we know not to displace the judgments of experts, acting within the sphere Congress marked out and under Presidential control, to deal with emergency conditions.”

“Today, we are not wise. In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed. As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible,” they added.

Biden officials argued that the coronavirus “is sickening and killing thousands of workers around the country” and that delaying the requirement to get vaccinated or tested regularly would “result in unnecessary illness, hospitalizations and death.”