Supreme Court quashes Joe Biden’s vaccination mandate

The humiliating decision wipes out the centrepiece of the administration’s Covid-19 policy amid a surge of Omicron cases.

In a humiliating decision for ruling Democrats the US Supreme Court has struck down Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, wiping out the centrepiece of the administration’s Covid-19 policy as the nation battles to contain a surge of Omicron cases.

In a six three decision – where the nine justices were split along alleged ideological lines – the court found the administration’s requirement that businesses with 100 or more employees ensure their employees were fully vaccinated against Covid-19 relied on too generous a reading of “occupational health and safety”.

The regulation, which would have fully taken effect in February, was made by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Agency.

“Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life — simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock — would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorisation,” the six majority justices said.

The policy would have required 84 million American workers to be vaccinated or comply with strict masking and testing requirements at their own expense.

“It is … a significant encroachment into the lives — and health — of a vast number of employees,” the justices wrote, pointing out that vaccines couldn’t be reversed by workers at the end of the day, unlike other occupational health and safety measures.

Joe Biden leaves a meeting with Senate Democrats. Picture: AFP.

Joe Biden said he was “disappointed” the court had struck down “commonsense lifesaving requirements” in a decision that for the president added to a dreadful week, marked by a sharp fall in his approval rating and bitter infighting among Democrats over whether to alter Senate rules to pass electoral reform bills.

“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”.

US states, who kept the right to introduce their own vaccine mandates if they wished, celebrated the decision as a win for federalism.

Jenin Younes, a lawyer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance in Washington, told The Australian it was “among the most important victories in the fight against government overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

“It helps to ensure that the federal government will not be able to use OSHA as a means of dictating the personal health and lifestyle decisions of millions of Americans employed by private companies”.

States and employer groups told the court they would incur billions of dollars in unrecoverable compliance costs and hundreds of thousands of employees would quit.

The Biden administration argued the mandate would have saved 6,500 lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalisations.

“The most noteworthy action concerning the vaccine mandate by either House of Congress has been a majority vote of the Senate disapproving the [mandate] regulation on December 8, 2021,” the judges noted, signalling it was up to Congress, not the government, to decide any vaccine mandate.

Republican Senator John Barrasso said the court’s decision was a “big win for the American people and freedom and a big loss for the Biden administration and big government”.

“I’m a doctor, I’m pro vaccine but I’m anti mandate, it was a massive overreach,” he said.

A third of Americans strongly supported the vaccine mandate, while 40 per cent were strongly opposed, according to a national survey published Thursday by Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports.

Three justices appointed by Democrat presidents Clinton and Obama, in a dissenting judgment said Covid-19 posed “grave dangers to the citizens of this country”.

“Covid – 19, in short, is a menace in work settings. The proof is all around us: Since the disease’s onset, most Americans have seen their workplaces transformed,” they said.

One of the three, Justice Sotomayor drew widespread condemnation while hearing oral arguments surrounding the case last week for claiming “over 100,000 children” were “in serious condition and many on ventilators” because of Covid-19, more than 20 times the actual figure.

The court upheld a separate federal rule that required health care workers to be vaccinated, which affected 10.4 million workers.

Jay Bhattacharya, a public health expert at the Hoover Institution, said the decision would “guarantee staff shortages in American hospitals for the foreseeable future.

“The vax does not halt transmission, so no marginal benefit to patients regarding Covid risk either,” he tweeted.

The Biden administration has struggled to win over Americans to its vaccination drive. Although the US as developer of the major Covid-19 vaccines had a head start in the global rollout, still 27 per cent of American adults eschewed full vaccinated, a larger share than most other developed nations.

Around 36 per cent the US vaccinated population had received a booster.