US Supreme Court Strikes down Biden’s Sweeping Vaccination Requirement in a 6-3 Judgment

The US Supreme Court issued two rulings on COVID-19 vaccination Requirement today, approving a stay to prevent the Occupational Health and Safety Administration from imposing a broad mandate while allowing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to impose a more limited mandate on healthcare workers.The OSHA Requirement, which was set to go into effect this week, would have mandated vaccines or masks and frequent testing for firms with 100 or more employees in the United States, with certain exceptions for outdoor and entirely remote workers.

In NFIB v OSHA, the Court ruled 6-3, rejecting a prior court judgment that had established the compulsion as legal. The conservative wing of the court contended that such a broad mandate, impacting 84 million employees, was beyond OSHA’s authority and amounted to a legislative power grab over choices that should have been left to the states or Congress.

“The question before us is not how to react to the epidemic, but who maintains the ability to do so,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said in a concurring opinion. “The answer is simple: Under current law, the States and Congress, not OSHA, have that authority. We don’t want to imply that the agency’s mandate isn’t well-intentioned. Instead, when it comes to the subject of who can regulate the lives of 84 million Americans, we just do our job of enforcing the law’s mandates.”

Aside from the separation of powers argument, the judgment made a contrast between an occupational hazard, which occurs only at work, and the general danger of life, claiming that giving OSHA authority over the latter would give them an extremely broad mandate.