The U.S. Supreme Court.Photo: Alex Wong/Getty
The U.S. Supreme Court this weekblocked the Biden’s administration’s vaccine mandate for large employers, which would have required companies with more than 100 workers to ensure that employees are either vaccinated against COVID or wear a mask and be tested on a weekly basis.
The workplace mandate was announced in September and would have applied to an estimated 84 million employees. It was set to take effect this month.
OSHA had said that it would begin fining businesses that violated the federal vaccine mandate in January and fining those that did not comply with the testing requirement in February. The penalties for non-compliance estimated roughly $14,000 per violation,USA Todayreports.
The majority of the court agreed, halting the enforcement of the mandate and writing in its unsigned opinion: “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 added: “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 Supreme Court has chosen to block common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law,” Biden said.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimated the order would have save over 6,500 lives and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations in the next six months, NBC Newsreported.
Not all of the justices were in agreement about blocking the mandate, however.
In their dissent, the court’s liberal judges including Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayer and Elena Kagan sided with theBiden administrationand reiterated the importance of the new mandate.
“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,” the liberal justices wrote. “As disease and death continue to mount, this court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible.”
In a separate decision, the Supreme Courtupheld a mandaterequiring healthcare workers at federally-funded facilities to be fully vaccinated against the virus or undergo weekly testing, voting 5 to 4 to uphold the rule for Medicare and Medicaid providers.
source: people.com
