US Supreme Court has Ruled Biden's workplace vaccine mandate, but it has maintained a medical rule

The Supreme Court in Washington. (image credit)

President Joe Biden's rule mandating large-company employees needs to be vaccinated or masked and tested weekly has been ruled by the US Supreme Court.

The mandate went beyond the Biden administration's purview, according to the nation's highest court.'

Separately, they concluded that a less strict vaccine mandate might apply to employees of govt healthcare facilities.

The Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration's vaccination-or-testing mandate for the nation's largest employers on Thursday, expressing skepticism about the legality of such a wide mandate.

However, the court permitted a different policy that required vaccines for the majority of healthcare employees at facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh were the only members of the court who voted in favor of both orders. Essentially, they observed that Congress had given federal agencies the ability to impose the requirement on healthcare workers in facilities receiving federal funds, but that there was no authority to enforce wide restrictions in workplaces across the country.

The workplace rules would have been permitted by Liberal Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The health-care worker requirements were opposed by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

President Biden expressed dissatisfaction with the decision to "block common-sense life-saving standards for employees at top companies that were founded in both science and the law."

"That does not stop me from using my voice as President to urge employers to do the right thing in order to safeguard Americans' health and economy," he said.

"I invite business leaders to join others who have already stepped forward, including one-third of the Fortune 100, and establish vaccine mandates to save their workers, customers, and communities."

Workers would have been obliged to take a Covid-19 shot or be masked and tested regularly at their own expense under the administration's workplace vaccine mandate.

It would have applied to workplaces with more than 100 employees, affecting around 84 million people. It was created with the intention of being enforced by employers.

The administration contended that both were required to encourage Americans to get vaccinated against covid-19.

The court stated in an unsigned judgment blocking the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) workplace guidelines that, while the risks connected with coronavirus present in many workplaces, "it is not an occupational hazard in most."

"COVID-19 can and does spread at home, at schools, in sporting events, and everywhere else people gather." "This type of universal risk is no different than the day-to-day threats that we all face from crime, air pollution, or any variety of infectious diseases," the ruling states. "Allowing OSHA to regulate everyday dangers — merely because most Americans have jobs and encounter those same risks while on the job — would greatly increase OSHA's regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization."

Critics said that the administration was overstepping its authority with the requirements, which were implemented in November and sparked legal challenges.

The judges agreed with that reasoning in a 6-3 decision, saying that the workplace safety rule for major businesses was too broad to be regulated by the Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

"This is not a 'routine exercise of federal power,'" they said. "Instead, it provides a massive interference into the lives - and health - of a large number of employees."

The more limited rule affecting around 10 million healthcare workers did not raise the same concerns, they decided by a vote of 5-4.

The verdicts come just as some aspects of the policy were set to take effect this week. On Friday, the court heard arguments in the case.

The decision to block the workplace mandate, according to the court's liberal justices, "stymies the federal government's capacity to overcome the extraordinary risk that COVID-19 poses to our nation's employees."

The states that challenged the policy claimed that the federal government lacked such coercive powers over the states. In practice, they added, worker opposition to the vaccine will lose the facilities' skilled staff at a time when they are most needed.

A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit dismissed a request by Florida to stop the mandate. However, a district judge in Missouri halted the restrictions, and the 5th Circuit concurred with a challenge from Louisiana.