On Thursday, Jan. 13, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down two very different rulings on federal vaccine mandates, striking down a mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that would have required all U.S. employers with at least 100 employees, to require that their employees get vaccinated, while upholding the mandate from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that requires that all employees at patient care organizations that receive Medicare or Medicaid payment, be vaccinated. In the first case, all six conservative justices united against the OSHA mandate, while in the second case, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the three liberal justices to uphold the CMS mandate.
As Adam Liptak wrote in The New York Times, “The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers, dealing a blow to a key element of the White House’s plan to address the pandemic as cases resulting from the Omicron variant are on the rise. But the court allowed a more modest mandate requiring health care workers at facilities receiving federal money to be vaccinated. The vote in the employer mandate case was 6 to 3, with liberal justices in dissent. The vote in the health care case was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joining the liberal justices to form a majority.”
As Robert Barnes wrote in The Washington Post, “Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh were the only members of the court in the majority of both orders. Essentially, they found Congress had given federal agencies the power to impose the requirement on health-care workers at facilities receiving federal funds, but that there was no authority to impose sweeping requirements in workplaces across the nation. Liberal Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would have allowed the workplace requirements. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett objected to the health-care worker requirements. President Biden accentuated the positive news regarding health-care workers, and said he was disappointed the court ruled against the administration on the workplace rules,” he wrote.
Here is the complete statement that President Biden released following the rulings, posted to the White House’s website, whitehouse.gov:
“My administration began to institute vaccination requirements last July, when after months of making vaccinations free and widely available, 90 million Americans were still unvaccinated. Today, that number is down to under 35 million. These vaccine requirements applied to members of the Armed Forces, federal workers and contractors, health care workers, and employees in large firms. Had my administration not put vaccination requirements in place, we would be now experiencing a higher death toll from COVID-19 and even more hospitalizations. Today’s decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the requirement for health care workers will save lives: the lives of patients who seek care in medical facilities, as well as the lives of doctors, nurses, and others who work there. It will cover 10.4 million health care workers at 76,000 medical facilities. We will enforce it.”
The President went on to say that, “At the same time, 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. 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. I call on business leaders to immediately join those who have already stepped up – including one third of Fortune 100 companies – and institute vaccination requirements to protect their workers, customers, and communities. We have to keep working together if we want to save lives, keep people working, and put this pandemic behind us.”
The employer mandate would have required workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or to wear masks and be tested weekly, though employers were not required to pay for the testing. There were exceptions for workers with religious objections and those who do not come into close contact with other people at their jobs, like those who work from home or exclusively outdoors.
This is a developing story. Healthcare Innovation will update it for our readers as new information is made available.
