What’s on the line as SCOTUS hears challenges to Biden vaccine mandates

The US Supreme Court on Friday will hear arguments about the validity of two projects central to the Biden administration’s efforts to combat the coronavirus in the workplace through vaccine requirements.

The challengers, which include Republican-led states, corporations, religious organisations, and others, claim that Congress has not authorised the measures, that they are unneeded, and that they are even detrimental in certain instances.

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According to the administration, workplace safety and health-care legislation have given it considerable ability to take decisive action in the event of a deadly epidemic.

What do the mandates say?

The more broad of the two bills, aimed at companies with 100 or more employees, would require more than 84 million people to get vaccinated or tested. According to the administration, the rule will result in the vaccination of 22 million individuals and the avoidance of 250,000 hospitalizations.

The other bill mandates coronavirus vaccination for staff in hospitals and other health-care facilities that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programmes. According to the administration, the measure would affect more than 17 million workers and would “save hundreds, or even thousands of lives each month.”

Despite the fact that the Supreme Court is still closed to the public, the justices are hearing the arguments in person, with the exception of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is participating electronically from her chamber. On its website, the court provides a live audio feed.

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According to a court spokesman, all of the justices have been completely immunised and have received a booster injection.

Cases against the mandates

In a series of cases, the Supreme Court has sustained state vaccine mandates despite constitutional concerns. The cases before the court are distinct in that they focus on whether Congress has given the executive branch authority to impose the restrictions.

The answer will largely depend on the terms of the applicable statutes and whether the administration issued the regulations in accordance with proper processes.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, of the Department of Labor imposed the vaccination-or-testing regulation for major businesses in November.

Employers may offer their employees the alternative of being tested weekly rather than receiving the vaccine, but they are not compelled to pay for the testing. Employees with religious objections and those who do not come into close contact with other people at their jobs, such as those who work at home or exclusively outdoors, are exempt from the restriction.

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The answer will largely depend on the terms of the applicable statutes and whether the administration issued the regulations in accordance with proper processes.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, of the Department of Labor imposed the vaccination-or-testing regulation for major businesses in November.

Employers may offer their employees the alternative of being tested weekly rather than receiving the vaccine, but they are not compelled to pay for the testing. Employees with religious objections and those who do not come into close contact with other people at their jobs, such as those who work at home or exclusively outdoors, are exempt from the restriction.

OSHA has the authority to adopt emergency workplace safety rules under a 1970 legislation if it can show that workers are in grave danger and that the rule is essential.

In appellate courts across the country, states, corporations, and others challenged the act, and a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans ruled in favour of some of the challengers, blocking the measure.

A divided three-judge court reinstated the legislation after the cases were consolidated before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.

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“The record establishes that Covid-19 has continued to spread, mutate, kill and block the safe return of American workers to their jobs,” Judge Jane B. Stranch wrote for the majority. “To protect workers, OSHA can and must be able to respond to dangers as they evolve.”

Judge Joan L. Larsen, writing in dissent, stated that the administration “likely lacks congressional authority” to impose the vaccine or testing mandate.

“The mandate is aimed directly at protecting the unvaccinated from their own choices,” she wrote. “Vaccines are freely available, and unvaccinated people may choose to protect themselves at any time.”

The challengers asserted in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, No. 21A244, that the regulation did not address a workplace issue and thus overstepped the agency’s legal power. In a recent petition to the Supreme Court, lawyers for Ohio and 26 other states stated, “Covid-19 is not an occupational danger that OSHA may regulate.”

They went on to say that agencies attempting to establish regulations on “major questions” with broad economic or political ramifications need unambiguous congressional approval.

The second case, Biden v. Missouri, No. 21A240, is a November regulation requiring health care workers at facilities receiving federal funds under the Medicare and Medicaid programmes to be vaccinated against the coronavirus unless they meet medical or religious exemptions.

The regulation was challenged by states governed by Republican politicians, who were successful in securing injunctions against it that covered almost half of the country. In New Orleans and St. Louis, two federal appeals courts refused to stay the injunctions while the appeals were being heard.

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In Atlanta, a third federal appeals court sided with the Biden administration. “Health care workers have long been required to obtain inoculations for infectious diseases, such as measles, rubella, mumps and others,” Judges Robin S. Rosenbaum and Jill A. Pryor wrote for a divided three-judge panel. “Because required vaccination is a common-sense measure designed to prevent health care workers, whose job it is to improve patients’ health, from making them sicker.”

Stance of the Biden administration

The Biden administration claimed that a federal statute provided it extensive jurisdiction to enforce controls on the health and safety of patients at federally funded facilities. The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has broad authority to issue regulations to ensure “efficient administration” of the Medicare and Medicaid programmes, and sections of the statute governing various types of facilities allow the secretary to impose requirements to protect patients’ health and safety.

“It is difficult to imagine a more paradigmatic health and safety condition than a requirement that workers at hospitals, nursing homes and other medical facilities take the step that most effectively prevents transmission of a deadly virus to vulnerable patients,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote in a Supreme Court brief.

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Attorneys for Missouri and other states responded by writing that the  “sweeping and unprecedented vaccine mandate for health care workers threatens to create a crisis in health care facilities in rural America.”

“The mandate would force millions of workers to choose between losing their jobs or complying with an unlawful federal mandate,” they wrote. “Last year’s health care heroes would have become this year’s unemployed,”  if a judge hadn’t given an injunction, they added.