In a couple of split rulings this afternoon, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate on private employers with 100 or more employees. On the other question of mandating vaccinations on healthcare workers who work at private facilities accepting Medicare or Medicaid, the Court upheld Biden’s rule requiring vaccination.
The court found that OSHA simply did not have the authority to impose such a mandate on private businesses affecting some 80 million Americans:
“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,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion.
“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,” the court wrote.
On the other topic of the healthcare worker mandate, the court sided differently, finding that authority exists under the Department of Health and Human Services:
But in a separate, simultaneously released ruling on the administration’s vaccination rules for health-care workers, the court wrote, “We agree with the Government that the [Health and Human Services] Secretary’s rule falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred upon him.”
Here’s the split, with a 6-3 ruling against the private employer mandate, and a 5-4 ruling in favor of the healthcare worker mandate:
Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan dissent from the decision to block the vax-or-test rule for workplaces of 100 or more employees.
Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, & Barrett dissent from the decision to allow the health care vaccine mandate to take effect nationwide.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) January 13, 2022
This outcome almost seemed to be where the cases were heading with the government failing to convince a majority of justices last week that OSHA had statutory authority to implement such a sweeping workplace rule on private businesses.
The healthcare worker mandate is perhaps less onerous on the majority of workers in the country, but more consequential in terms of critical workers being potentially fired for refusing to receive a Covid vaccination. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh joined the liberal wing of the court to uphold the CMS healthcare worker mandate. Clearly, beyond being the Roberts court, this may turn into the Kavanaugh court as he seems to be the most likely among the court’s conservative wing to jump ship along with the chief justice.
The Biden administration will praise the healthcare worker ruling as a victory and likely explain away the private employer mandate ruling as being unnecessary since vaccination rates have steadily increased thanks to omicron fear. There’s some truth to that since merely by the act of announcing the mandate on private employers months ago, the administration succeeded in threatening workers to get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs around the holiday season, a tactic that certainly worked in some instances.
The outcome will force the Biden administration to retreat from trying to impose a national Covid vaccine mandate by using backdoor methods such as OSHA. There simply isn’t the constitutional authority to do so. This does not mean, however, that other methods of control, such as requiring vaccination proof for domestic air travel, are out of the question.
In total, this has not been a good week for the Biden administration. With today’s split court ruling ending the private vaccine mandate before it began, and the Democratic-controlled Senate refusing to go along with Biden’s “nuke the filibuster” plan, the year isn’t starting well for Democrats.
