Supreme Court seems skeptical of Biden’s vaccine rules for businesses, more receptive to policy for health-care workers
By Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow
The Washinmgton Post
Yesterday at 7:43 p.m. EST
Conservative Supreme Court justices on Friday appeared skeptical that the Biden administration has legal authority to impose a broad coronavirus vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers, casting doubt on President Biden’s most ambitious plan to fight the pandemic.
But there was a different reaction to the administration’s vaccine mandate for health-care personnel at facilities that receive federal Medicaid and Medicare funds. Some of the justices who expressed doubt about the general workplace requirements seemed more open to the idea that federal officials could require those workers to get vaccinated for the coronavirus.
The answer to both could come quickly — the court is considering emergency petitions either to allow the regulations to go into effect or to stop them, and both sides asked the court to act soon.
It is highly unusual for the justices to hold oral arguments on emergency requests, but Friday’s session went more than three and a half hours. It underscored the national debate over the threat of the coronavirus and the political division over how large a role government can play in requiring its citizens to be vaccinated.
There was a real-time dynamic as well. Besides the impending deadlines, some justices came armed with the latest numbers on the surging omicron variant, and their very actions displayed their concern.
All of the justices have been vaccinated and received boosters, but for the first time since they resumed in-person arguments, all began Friday’s session masked, with the exception of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. His seatmate, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 67 and diagnosed with diabetes as a child, participated remotely from her chambers.
In weighing previous challenges to coronavirus restrictions and requirements, the court has been largely deferential to states — but skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. That seemed to be the case when the court considered the rule proposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which would cover about 80 million workers.
A majority of justices seemed inclined to agree with private businesses and 27 Republican-led states challenging the order that OSHA’s proposed action was beyond a federal agency’s powers.
Such a workplace requirement “sounds like the sort of thing that states will be responding to or should be, and that Congress should be responding to … rather than agency by agency, the federal government, the executive branch acting alone,” said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Washington lawyer Scott A. Keller, representing the National Federation of Independent Business, said it was an unprecedented imposition by the federal government on private workplaces.
“Our nation’s businesses have distributed and administered hundreds of millions of covid vaccines to Americans. Businesses have encouraged and incentivized their employees to get vaccines,” Keller told the court. “But a single federal agency tasked with occupational standards cannot commandeer businesses economywide into becoming de facto public health agencies.”
Gorsuch seemed to agree with Roberts. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked questions even more skeptical. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wondered if the regulation was drawn too broadly or should be more targeted at specific industries and workplaces, rather than imposed on all businesses with 100 or more employees.
The court’s three liberal justices seemed confident the federal agencies had proper authority in both cases and exasperated by the questioning.
Several times, Justice Stephen G. Breyer mentioned that there were “nearly three-quarters of a million people, new cases” every day.
“I would find it, you know, unbelievable that it could be in the public interest to suddenly stop these vaccinations,” Breyer said.
“More and more people are dying every day. More and more people are getting sick eve
Supreme Court seems skeptical of Biden's vaccine rules for businesses, more receptive to policy for health-care workers - The Washington Post |
