Former President Donald Trump is hailing the Supreme Court’s ruling that blocked a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for businesses with at least 100 employers.
In a statement on Thursday, Trump said, “The Supreme Court has spoken, confirming what we all knew: Biden’s disastrous mandates are unconstitutional. Biden promised to shut down the virus, not the economy but he has failed miserably on both—and mandates would have further destroyed the economy.”
“We are proud of the Supreme Court for not backing down. No mandates!” he added.
NEW TRUMP STATEMENT: "The Supreme Court has spoken, confirming what we all knew: Biden's disastrous mandates are unconstitutional. Biden promised to shut down the virus, not the economy but he has failed miserably on both…” pic.twitter.com/dLNgD7QED9
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 13, 2022
On Thursday, the court blocked President Joe Biden’s mandate that businesses with at least 100 employees require that their workers get vaccinated or tested weekly, as IJR reported.
However, it let stand a separate requirement that most health care workers get vaccinated.
An unsigned opinion read, “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.”
“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,” it added.
In a dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan said, “When we are wise, we know not to displace the judgments of experts, acting within the sphere Congress marked out and under Presidential control, to deal with emergency conditions.”
“Today, we are not wise. In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed. As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible,” they added.
All six of the court’s conservative justices voted to block the business mandate. However, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, joined the court’s three liberal justices to keep the health care requirement in place.
Kavanaugh’s decision to side with the liberal justices on the health care requirement drew the ire of conservatives on social media.
In a statement, Biden also reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision. He said, “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.”
“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,” he added.
