BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court BLOCKS Biden’s vaccine mandates for private companies in huge blow to White House COVID plan – but upholds rules for health care workers
- The court’s Thursday decision allows Biden’s vaccine mandate for healthcare employees at facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds to stay
- More than 80 million US workers would have been affected by private rule
- The decision to block Biden’s private mandate fell 6 to 3, all liberals against
- Biden’s rule for health care workers was allowed to stay in a 5 to 4 decision
- In September Biden ordered companies with 100 or more employees to impose a vaccine mandate or set up weekly COVID testing
The Supreme Court has blocked President Joe Biden’s vaccine-or-test mandate for private companies with 100 or more employees, in a decision handed down on Thursday.
The high court did however allow a vaccine mandate for employees at health care facilities receiving federal dollars to go into effect.
In a 6-3 decision the court’s conservative majority concluded the administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose the rule on large US businesses.
Roughly 84 million people would have been affected.
The decision to allow the mandate on healthcare workers in Medicare and Medicaid-funded settings fell 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh siding with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer.
It’s the latest blow in a devastating day for Biden, who just in the last few hours failed to gin up support among Senate Democrats to scuttle the filibuster and pass voting rights legislation.
Biden rolled out sweeping measures in September aimed at getting more Americans vaccinated, after the rate of inoculations slumped as the Delta variant brought a new wave of infections over the summer. If implemented, they would have affected a combined one-third of the US workforce.
Following the president’s orders the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the agency which ensures public and private workplace safety on a federal level, rolled out details for its rules for private companies.
In the 6-3 majority opinion, the conservative justices claim the rule ‘draws no distinctions based on industry or risk of exposure to COVID–19.’
The conservative-majority court ruled that the Biden administration had overstepped its bounds with the rule on private businesses