Breaking: US Supreme Court Blocks President Biden’s Vaccine Mandate for Large Businesses

The US Supreme Court today blocked President Joe Biden’s mandate for businesses that employ 100 workers or more to ensure that they either are vaccinated or wearing masks and testing weekly.

"The bottom line: We're going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers," said President Joe Biden when he announced the requirement.

Today, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, said, "The Supreme Court's decision on the mandate means that it is up to individual employers to determine whether their workplaces will be safe for employees and whether their businesses will be safe for consumers.

"President Biden will be continue to call on businesses to immediately join those who have stepped up: including one-third of Fortune 100 companies to institute vaccination requirements to protect their workers, customers, and communities."

In November 2021, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced that the rule, which would have applied to nearly 80 million American workers, would have saved more than 6,500 lives and prevented 250,000 hospitalizations in the next six months, while the same court allowed the enforcement of a vaccine mandate that requires 17 million health care workers to be vaccinated.

Last fall, however, many red states and businesses together challenged Biden’s large business vaccine mandate by claiming that said the government lacked the necessary power to issue such a sweeping directive. 

States opposed to the mandate said that Biden’s law gave the government the authority to impose general health and safety rules for facilities like hospitals, while not granting the power to require vaccines. 

For instance, the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid has never before required vaccinations, argued those who opposed the mandate.

Initially, lower courts blocked Biden’s mandate, however, a later ruling allowed it to go into effect, when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit called the OSHA rule "an important step in curtailing the transmission of a deadly virus that has killed over 800,000 people in the United States, brought our health care system to its knees, and cost hundreds of thousands of workers their jobs." 

In response to the judge’s ruling that allowed the mandate, the National Federation for Independent Businesses called the appeals court ruling "a gut punch to America's small businesses who are struggling to stay in business as they come out of the pandemic."

Psaki said that a Navigator Poll revealed that 57% of Americans support vaccine requirements, and similarly,  according to another survey of 534 US employers, 57% of employers have or will require their employees to get vaccinated.