Breaking — Supremes blocks Biden Covid vaccine mandate for businesses, allows health-care worker rule

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing its sweeping vaccine-or-test requirements for large private companies.
But the conservative-majority court allowed similar requirements to stand for medical facilities that take Medicare or Medicaid payments.
The OSHA mandate required that workers at businesses with 100 or more employees must get vaccinated or submit a negative Covid test weekly to enter the workplace.

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing its sweeping vaccine-or-test requirements for large private companies, but allowed similar requirements to stand for medical facilities that take Medicare or Medicaid payments.

The rulings came three days after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s emergency measure started to take effect.

That mandate required that workers at businesses with 100 or more employees must get vaccinated or submit a negative Covid test weekly to enter the workplace. It also required unvaccinated workers to wear masks indoors at work.

“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.

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.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/13/supreme-court-ruling-biden-covid-vaccine-mandates.html