Lots of gray encircles discussion of COVID, the variants, vaccines, boosters, test kits, state-level mandates, but one issue is now settled. Last week the US Supreme Court ruled that a mandate forcing vaccines – under threat of federal penalties – on employers with 100 or more employees – cannot stand. Most scholars thought so, but now we know. See, e.g., Supreme Court blocks Biden OSHA vaccine mandate, allows rule for health care workers.
What does that decision mean? Plain things, and more than meets the eye.
First, the Court made clear, while the federal government can require some health care workers to comply, they cannot issue a blanket federal mandate threatening employers with punishment for not infringing their employees’ rights. That is a big relief.
To most Americans, whatever their view of vaccines, the holding makes sense. The High Court ruled OSHA – the Occupational Health and Safety Administration – lacked “authority” to impose such a broad, heavy-handed penalty across all American employers.
Specifically, the law “empowers” OSHA to “set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures,” and “although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most.”
“COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather.” Common sense says “that kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases.”
Accordingly, Biden’s overreach is impermissible. As in other areas, like a unilateral extension of an eviction ban during COVID, the Court said: No. They also struck down Biden’s eviction ban last summer.
Since the OSHA mandate “would significantly expand” federal authority beyond parameters set by statute, the federal mandate fails. At a basic level, employers can now honor citizen rights without the threat of penalty and need not enforce the expansive federal mandate.
The second impact is more subtle. The Court is sending a message – relating to COVID and other issues. They take a dim view of federal overreach, misinterpretation of federal statutes, over-regulation, and unilateral assertion of authorities not reasonably found in governing laws.
Third, the High Court held fire on the “issue behind the issue,” a constitutional question raised by persistent Biden White House flouting of US Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution.
The 10th Amendment says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” That Amendment is important. See, e.g., The Tenth Amendment; All of a Sudden, Everyone Loves the Tenth Amendment.
While the Supreme Court did not reach the issue, since the statute’s meaning was made clear, constitutional questions still hover. The 19th Amendment is why Trump did not attempt federal vaccine mandates, and why a material difference separates Federal and State mandates.
The implication that shadows this ruling, and Biden knows it, is that the High Court does not favor federal usurpation of constitutionally protected rights of “the States” or “people.”
Fourth, this ruling is important for the economy. While federal benefits sidelined much of the labor force, artificially pushing wages up, limiting labor availability, compounding business and consumer concerns over inflation, interest rates, and growth, this ruling may pop the cork –permit businesses to believe again.
While the federal vaccine mandate – and threats of federal punishment for not firing employees without vaccines – is only a small part of federal mismanagement of the economy, removing that barrier may give businesses confidence (and employees vital assurances) to push up growth.
Often a High Court ruling will affect the parties, maybe one sector, perhaps have an incremental impact on many, but here is something different. The initial overbroad mandate affected a huge number of US businesses. Accordingly, removing it does the same – in a positive direction,
Finally, the most subtle – arguably most important – the impact is this: The Supreme Court will not be moved, cowed, dictated to, scared, threatened, or quieted by an aggressive executive branch.
That has big implications for other Court rulings, makes the Americans safer. If the judicial branch is independent of politics, a coequal branch, the Republic is safer. If a day comes when the Court bows to politics, all bets are off. So, this ruling was important – and good.
End mask mandates for population alone
While covid is not an occupational hazard in most settings, one would think in a Healthcare setting, most would opt go get vaxed. However there are many communicable diseases one could be exposed to in a Healthcare setting and workers take the necessary precautions to avoid infection. Those precautions are a matter of hospital policy not mandates from the federal government. Let these institutions and their employees figure this out for themselves in their own best interests. Big government stand down!
Ironic that lawyers are forcing doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers that worked throughout the worst of the pandemic and more than likely had covid at one point to be forced to put a needle in their arms and take something that they can’t sue the manufacturer for damages. How is it that suddenly judges and lawyers and politicians have medical degrees???
Any sane doctor will quit and open up his own practice that doesn’t take Medicaid or Medicare and then the people that they’ve served tirelessly for years that we pay for, will not be supported or treated. And yet they claim that they’re the party for the inner city, for the undertreated. Most medical professionals that I know of that actually saw clients had covid (and it was nothing more than a few days of coughs and sniffles for them) at the beginning of 2020 and are more immune and actually have followed the science and believe it or not the science isn’t Fauci, the murderer behind the AIDS epidemic and other atrocities.
This points out the absolute ownership of everyone that is bowing their knees to this wicked bureaucratic big Pharma, tech lies. Note well, everyone who is selling you out. For they would ship you off to a camp in a heartbeat to serve their corporate masters. Do you want to live? Stand up!!
Also how is terrorizing the American people night and day— lying to them that this is so dangerous okay? How is this not similar to yelling fire in a crowded theater? Why doesn’t anyone bring up that they passed the Smith-Mundt modernization act in 2012 that allows them to propagandize and lie to us and that is the very reason nothing they say has to be backed by any truth?!!
Caring for people isn’t in them. Otherwise at the beginning the studies showing that people with Vitamin D levels over 50 nm/nl don’t get covid would have been what was pushed and doctors that followed those studies and supplemented their not healthy patients with D3 had 0 casualties and 0 hospitalizations from this. These same doctors also didn’t abandon patients during this and when their clinics shutdown they went to the patients homes and saw them. There are people that aren’t total shit out there still, may we all be the ones that are standard bearers for the rest.
RBC,
While the first half of the Supreme Court’s ruling does everything you stated, the second part of their ruling upholding the mandate to any medical institution (virtually every hospital, clinic, etc. in this country) and medical professional (virtually every doctor, nurse and ambulance crew, etc. in this country) that accepts federal funding (any sort of federal grants, Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements, etc.) is still worrisome.
The roughly 10 million Americans that make up the medical profession in this country seem to have been relegated to second tier status of citizen’s rights and freedoms, as they must conform to Biden’s unconstitutional mandate or lose their jobs and livelihoods. This part of the Supreme Court’s decision, which flies in the face of almost everything you stated as justification why the employer / employee mandate that was ruled unconstitutional makes little sense from a consistency of standards and equal application under the law applied to all basis. It leaves the door open to potential future abuses of executive authority by allowing for an unequal application of the law depending upon one’s employer or profession. Once again, Chief Justice John Roberts has managed to make a clear-cut constitutional decision into an unnecessary murky mess by setting a new, dangerous legal precedent.
Just a reminder to everyone: the “health care” mandate does not just apply to doctors, nurses and front-line medical workers (many of whom have opted NOT to get the shot because of side effects and for other reasons). It ALSO applies to those working for companies that are affiliated with Medicare and Medicaid.. This includes insurance companies, like the one for which my son-in-law works. He has had bouts with COVID (both the original and Omicron) in the past five months, and has recovered, in good measure because his doctor prescribed ivermectin early in the infection. He has worked from home at his job for roughly two years, so does not have a presence at the company itself. His income supports his wife and four children, ages 12 and under. He will not take the shot, believing that his natural immunity is much better for him than adding unknown elements to his body and the acknowledged side effects of the “vaccine.”.
His company notified him in early December that any employee like himself, who would not take the shot, would be summarily fired in early January. At the moment, that is on hold, but it could change at any time. He has filed for a religious exemption, but there is no evidence that the company will respect that.
Please keep folks like him and his family in prayer, Thank you!
Unfortunately, it seems that the Wuhan virus and its many variants are being used more for political purposes than for health reasons. The current Socialist oriented regime in the White House and Congress are using the Wuhan virus as a way to give the Federal Government more control over our social lives and our work. In no way has the extremes the Federal Government has gone to worth any possible positives they may have created. A fact of nature is that humans die. Another fact of nature is that humans die from viruses. The fact that the Wuhan virus was most likely manipulated by the Communist Chinese with funding from American taxpayers through Anthony Fauci’s fascist control of the NHI may be cause to be more concerned about the Wuhan virus, but we really should be focusing on holding those who have worked to create this deadly virus accountable for biological warfare.
Trump is wrong on the vaxx, deSantis is right.
We learned things from this ruling:
We are all relieved that The Court recognized that a President is not a dictator and cannot blithely decide to impose mandates. The legislature makes laws.
I hate to say it but we learned that Sotomayor may have had an interesting life, but one thing that was not a part of it was an education in our Constitution. And another is that she was not put on the court because of her high IQ.
If I didn’t know the law, I would look it up before I wrote a decision. If I didn’t know the numbers, I would look them up before I included them in that decision.
Another thing I noticed is that the Court seems to be a bit better about taking up challenging cases now than it was last year.
Why didn’t The Court look at even one case from the election. Americans would not have been as up in the air if the Court at least looked at the overwhelming evidence of fraud, the affidavits people signed at the risk of their jobs, their lives…
Why didn’t the Court at least look at one thing? Were they threatened or bought off?
Another thing we learned is that now Kavanaugh joins Roberts as being ready to join bad decisions. I do understand that when you take federal money, you take the rules that go along with that. But those closest to the sick are the ones that know the most about their personal decisions about health. Why are we making them give up their personal prejudices formed by greater knowledge? It may go with the territory, but it is a decision I would expect more from an unelected bureaucrat enforcing federal rules, rather than from a Supreme Court Justice who is supposed to be adjudicating from The Constitution.
Biden should not be permitted to get away with the way he ignores court rulings.
Even if he is President, a dubious assumption at best, there ought to be a way to punish him for his lawbreaking.
Should not be able to mandate vaccines for ANYONE. Health care workers all worked thru 2020 with no vaccines and most have already had the damn virus so have way better immunity than those fake vaccines give you. And it’s against HIPAA to even ask anyone about their health status, etc. Biden needs to be locked in his basement and all so called ‘mandates’ both federal and state that have to do with covid should be tossed out the window.
I listened to an hour and a half of the health care mandate bs. Not even once did I hear anyone mention the fact that this “vaccine “ is not a vaccine. Vaccines are made to protect the recipients from getting the disease. This shot still allows the recipient to contract the virus, they just quelch the symptoms; therefore, allowing them to pass it on to whosoever they wish. Wake up America! You are being duped into your own demise.
THANK YOUFinaly some common sense.It’s a start. Still leaves a big door open that needs slammed shut.
Here is the problem, healthcare workers, military and other federal employees are discriminated against due to their career choice. And if CA requires nurses to be vaxed, but also have to work while sick, that is not science, it is stupidity. There should be no mandates, for all Americans, period. Besides, the vaccines are ineffective, and the vaxed spread Covid. I had Covid, it was mild, I survived….proving Joe a liar, the unvaxed are not dying. FJB
It is ashamed to have a Supreme Court to decide which one to follow if they ban the mandate for business not to require their employment not to have a vaccine they should do it every where else furthermore that’s tells me we’re in a big trouble because once they that for health care provider very soon it will come to every one to get the mark of the beast of which I believe COVID19 is a preclude for the mark of the beast arise.
Let’s finally burn the masks; put the children back in schools; dump CRT; encourage back to work; stop the arrest and release. Let’s get back to American Freedom!