The health care worker rule was given the go-ahead by the high court in a narrow five-justice majority.
Both decisions were made with the authority of federal regulators in mind. The majority ruled that OSHA was overstepping its authority, but not the Department of Health and Human Services, in the health care worker case.
The business mandate was punted back to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by the court. If the case returns to the high court, a majority of the justices will likely side with businesses and Republican-led states that sued to quash the requirement, which would affect an estimated 84 million workers.
It was unclear if the Biden administration would continue the legal fight after the Supreme Court's interim actions took on added weight.
Biden said he was disappointed that the Supreme Court had blocked the life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded in both science and the law.
Biden said that states and employers need to implement their own vaccine policies. He will continue to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans' health and economy.
The large-business mandate expires after six months if the Labor Department doesn't replace it with a permanent standard. The White House doesn't have much time left to win a case.
Marty Walsh said thatOSHA will be evaluating all options to make sure workers are protected from this deadly virus. Regardless of the outcome of these proceedings, OSHA will continue to hold businesses accountable for protecting workers.
The court's conservative members wrote that Walsh didn't have the authority to impose the mandate. Administrative agencies are not normal. They have the authority that Congress has given them.
They said there was no basis for holding interim relief.
Hundreds of thousands of employees will leave their jobs and billions of dollars in unrecoverable compliance costs will be incurred because of OSHA's mandate, according to the States and employers. The Federal Government says that the mandate will save thousands of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations. It's not our job to weigh tradeoffs.
The justices argued that their colleagues were ignoring the input of public health experts.
In an unusual joint dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said that the Court acted outside of its competence and without legal basis.
In the health care worker case, the court's majority wrote that the HHS Secretary did not overstep his authority in requiring that the facilities covered by the interim be eligible for Medicare and Medicaid dollars.
Clarence Thomas wrote that if Congress wanted to grant the power to impose a vaccine mandate across all facility types, it would have done what it has done elsewhere.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy ConeyBarrett were with him.
The conservatives made a decision in the OSHA case.
Bobby Scott, the House Education and Labor Chair, said in a statement that the Supreme Court's decision to block OSHA's emergency workplace standard undermines a 50-year-old workplace safety law and threatens OSHA's authority to protect workers during a public health emergency. This is exactly the type of judicial activism that the Republicans once decried.
The National Retail Federation, one of more than two dozen trade associations contesting the regulation, was quick to praise the court's move blocking the OSHA rule.
The National Retail Federation said that the Supreme Court decision to stay OSHA's ETS is a significant victory for employers. The NRF and other people who brought the case argued that OSHA overstepped its authority by promulgating its original mandate under emergency powers without giving stakeholders the benefit of a rulemaking process.
NRF urges the Biden Administration to work with employers, employees and public health experts on ways to increase vaccination rates and mitigate the spread of the virus in 2022.
Employers said that pausing the implementation of the regulation will help them economically.
The president and CEO of the Job Creators Network said that the Supreme Court stood up for small businesses by staying the vaccine mandate. The Supreme Court has freed small businesses to focus on bringing the economy back to its pre-pandemic peak by issuing this stay.
The court heard arguments for and against lifting the stays on the rules in a special session just six days ago, while liberal justices seemed surprised at the idea of preventing the rules from taking effect.
The regulation requires employers with 100 or more employees to ensure that their workers are protected against Covid-19 or wear masks at all times in the workplace, and is being fought by many states and business groups.
The rule oversteps federal authority and should be left to the states to regulate vaccination. Businesses argue that implementing the standard would cause them economic harm, including a loss of workers to smaller businesses not subject to the rule.
The challengers argued that if the rule is enforced, many health care facilities in rural areas would be forced to close because of vaccine hesitancy.
The OSHA standard and health worker guidelines have been in legal limbo since the Biden administration issued them last year.
The 6th Circuit lifted the stay on the OSHA mandate after it was chosen via lottery to hear a consolidated version of the legal challenges to the mandate.
In the health care workers case, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to stop two injunctions against the mandate that were issued by U.S. District Court judges in Louisiana and Missouri.
Biden announced that requirement on Sept. 9 as part of a dramatic expansion of the administration's bid to boost vaccination rates. More than 17 million workers and 50,000 health facilities will be affected by the mandate.
The American Hospital Association has consistently urged all health care workers to be vaccine free, but they also recognize that a vaccine requirement has the potential to create additional workforce staffing issues, at a time when our workforce is already exhausted by the many demands.
He called on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an arm of HHS, to ensure that compliance is measured in a thoughtful and careful way that recognizes current circumstances, and on the administration to work with us by providing the funding and other resources needed to pursue aggressive and creative strategies to bolster.
The 5th Circuit partially lifted a nationwide block on the mandate after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down the Biden administration's request that a temporary freeze on the mandate in 10 states be lifted.
The large-business rule was due to take effect earlier this week. Employers had until February 9 to develop their testing strategies for unvaccinated workers.
There are lawsuits pending in other courts over the Biden administration's Covid-19 vaccine mandates for uniformed military personnel, federal workers and federal contractors. The Supreme Court has yet to hear those cases.
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