Washington, D.C. – The Supreme Court handed down multiple decisions regarding Biden’s vaccine mandates. In one (NFIB v. OSHA), the Supreme Court rebutted Biden, but in the other (Biden v. Missouri), the Court sided with Biden.
In the OSHA ruling, the Court was split 6 to 3 with the conservative judges all aligned. In the case of Biden v. Missouri, the Court had to determine whether Biden’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers is constitutional.
This time, though, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the liberal judges in upholding Biden.
The basis of the decision is that because hospitals and health care workers directly get federal funding, the Biden administration had the authority to impose the mandate.
Neither Roberts, who was appointed by President Bush nor Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump, lent their name to give a direct explanation of their decision.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both gave scathing dissents, with Justice Gorsuch and Justice Barrett in agreement.
Justice Alito sums up his dissent with,
“Neither CMS nor the Court articulates a limiting principle for why, after an unexplained and unjustified delay, an agency can regulate first and listen later, and then put more than 10 million healthcare workers to the choice of their jobs or an irreversible medical treatment. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.”
Justice Thomas’ dissent is more centered around CMS’s lack of authority. He argues,
“If Congress had wanted to grant CMS authority to impose a nationwide vaccine mandate, and consequently alter the state-federal balance, it would have said so clearly. It did not.”
Both Thomas and Alito make the argument that the Executive Branch of the Federal Government is only getting stronger, as Congress is abdicating its responsibilities.
Alito writes,
“Today’s decision will ripple through administrative agencies’ future decision making. The Executive Branch already touches nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives. In concluding that CMS had good cause to avoid notice-and-comment rulemaking, the Court shifts the presumption against compliance with procedural strictures from the unelected agency to the people they regulate.”
With past weeks’ decisions, only one of Biden’s vaccine mandates is still in legal limbo, which is his mandate on federal workers and contractors. The Court has not yet held arguments on that regulation.
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