On Thursday the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s vaccine or test mandate for businesses with at least 100 workers; however, they did grant the Biden administrations vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.
The rulings were met with mixed reactions. Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, has been very vocal about the installed administration and its policies that they’re trying to tyrannically push through. He wasn’t silent on the Supreme Courts’ healthcare workers’ ruling.
DeSantis slammed both Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh during a guest appearance on the popular conservative podcast “Ruthless” that aired Friday.
“On the nurse mandate and the doctor mandate, Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the liberals to allow the nurse mandate,” DeSantis said to a booing crowd.
“So here’s what’s going on, think about how insane this is,” he continued. “Now, in Florida, we protected the nurses, so we have people that are working. But in other states, they fired nurses who were not vaccinated.”
“So they have COVID-positive people back on, meanwhile the unvaccinated, likely immune through prior infection, healthy nurses are on the sidelines fired,” DeSantis continued. “How insane are these policies?”
“But honestly, Roberts and Kavanaugh did not have a backbone on that decision,” DeSantis also said. “That’s just the bottom line.”
Despite the rulings against the mandate for private businesses; they did rule that Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra did have the authority to require all health care workers at institutions that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to get the jab unless they get medical or religious exemptions.
Multiple states argued that While multiple states argued that HHS did not have the scope to issue such a mandate, the Court noted that “healthcare facilities that wish to participate in Medicare and Medicaid have always been obligated to satisfy a host of conditions that address the safe and effective provision of healthcare, not simply sound accounting.”
The requirement was voted on 5-4 and mainly affects healthcare workers in locations that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding from the government.
“The challenges posed by a global pandemic do not allow a federal agency to exercise power that Congress has not conferred upon it,” the Supreme Court said in its second unsigned opinion. “At the same time, such unprecedented circumstances provide no grounds for limiting the exercise of authorities the agency has long been recognized to have.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.
The unsigned opinion on the OSHA mandate was voted down 6-3. The mandate would have required businesses with 100+ employees to require their workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or do weekly testing.
“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 said. “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 three members of the court’s liberal wing, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, dissented.
Buried within the ruling was a citation from the official account of White House chief of staff, Ron Klain. He retweeted MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle’s statement that the mandates were a workaround for a federal mandate.
In a concurrence written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, he notes that Congress has not given OSHA the power to issue a vaccine mandate, and he goes on to cite the “work-around” comment.
“It seems, too, that the agency pursued its regulatory initiative only as a legislative ‘work-around,'” he opined.
OSHA issued a rule in November stating that businesses would have to require their employees to be vaccinated or be subject to weekly testing and wear face masks. Those who failed to comply would face fines. The vaccine or test was supposed to take effect on January 4, but they would not start issuing the fines before February 9 as long as “they exercise reasonable, good faith efforts to come into compliance” with the requirement.
However, OSHA’s ruling was challenged in federal courts across the country, finally being consolidated in the 6th Circuit. The end result being Thursday’s ruling against private businesses mandating the vaccine.
“Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life — simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock — would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization,” the court said.
Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan wrote in a dissent that the policy falls within OSHA’s mission of protecting employees from “grave danger” that comes from “new hazards” or exposure to harmful agents.
“In our view, the court’s order seriously misapplies the applicable legal standards. And in so doing, it stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID–19 poses to our nation’s workers,” the three justices wrote. “Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the court displaces the judgments of the government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies.”
Former vice president Joe Biden made sure he let us peasants know that he is disappointed that the Supreme Court ruled against him in this matter.
“I am disappointed that 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. This emergency standard allowed employers to require vaccinations or to permit workers to refuse to be vaccinated, so long as they were tested once a week and wore a mask at work: a very modest burden.”
“As a result of the Court’s decision, it is now up to States and individual employers to determine whether to make their workplaces as safe as possible for employees, and whether their businesses will be safe for consumers during this pandemic by requiring employees to take the simple and effective step of getting vaccinated,” Biden continued. “The Court has ruled that my administration cannot use the authority granted to it by Congress to require this measure, but that does not stop me from using my voice as President to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans’ health and economy.”
No, former vice president. You do not need to advocate for employers to force a medical procedure on us. We do still have medical freedom and the tyranny will come to an end.
Crucial elections are this year and tyranny will be voted out.
