In a 6 to 3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily put a halt to the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate.
The ruling, responding to an action of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced last fall, said the federal order requiring companies with at least 100 employers to either get a covid vaccination or provide weekly testing was an overreach.
According to analysts, those companies have up to 84 million people on their payrolls.
In its ruling, the higher court stated that “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 opinion continued: “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.”
At the same time, the court, in a 5 to 4 ruling, allowed for a vaccine mandate for health providers working at federally funded facilities.
In a statement, Ben Brubeck, vice-president of regulatory, labor and state affairs with the Associated Builders and Contractors, characterized the 6 to 3 ruling as a “big win in removing compliance hurdles for the construction industry.”
The Associated Builders and Contractors was one of several industry groups going to court to stop the OSHA order: last November it filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit opposing the order.
Chuck Fowke, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, said that the court ruling “shows that OSHA clearly exceeded its authority.”
In a statement, Fowke added that the NAHB has consistently encouraged its members to get vaccinated. “But using OSHA as the primary mechanism for this effort exceeds its statutory authority as a workplace safety agency.”
In a statement released by the White House, President Biden said he was “disappointed that the Supreme Court has chosen to block common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large business that were grounded squarely in both science and the law.”
Biden added that as a result of the higher court ruling it will now be “up to the 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 customers during this pandemic by requiring employees to take the simple and effective step of getting vaccinated.”
By Garry Boulard
