The Supreme Court today blocked Joe Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate for business while allowing it to enforce a separate mandate for health car workers.
The court ruled 6-3 with the six conservative justices in the majority and three liberal justices dissenting in blocking the broader workplace mandate that affected any business with over 100 employees. The high court blocked a Dec. 17 decision by the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had allowed the mandate to go into effect.
“The Secretary of Labor, acting through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, recently enacted a vaccine mandate for much of the Nation’s work force. The mandate, which employers must enforce, applies to roughly 84 million workers, covering virtually all employers with at least 100 employees. It requires that covered workers receive a COVID–19 vaccine, and it pre-empts contrary state laws. The only exception is for workers who obtain a medical test each week at their own expense and on their own time, and also wear a mask each workday,” the opinion states. “OSHA has never before imposed such a mandate. Nor has Congress. Indeed, although Congress has enacted significant legislation addressing the COVID–19 pandemic, it has declined to enact any measure similar to what OSHA has promulgated here. Many States, businesses, and nonprofit organizations challenged OSHA’s rule in Courts of Appeals across the country.”
“The Fifth Circuit initially entered a stay. But when the cases were consolidated before the Sixth Circuit, that court lifted the stay and allowed OSHA’s rule to take effect. Applicants now seek emergency relief from this Court, arguing that OSHA’s mandate exceeds its statutory authority and is otherwise unlawful. Agreeing that applicants are likely to prevail, we grant their applications and stay the rule,” the opinion continues.
The unsigned opinion blocking the rule for businesses calls it no “‘everyday exercise of federal power.’ It is instead a significant encroachment into the lives—and health—of a vast number of employees.”
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The vote was 5-4 to allow the mandate against health care workers — many of whom are Christians who don’t want to get the COVID vaccine because they are made with or tested on cells from an aborted baby.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joining the liberals in the majority on the health care ruling while Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett dissented in the ruling on the mandate against health care workers.
“The Government has not made a strong showing that this agglomeration of statutes authorizes any such rule,” Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent. “The Government proposes to find virtually unlimited vaccination power, over millions of healthcare workers, in definitional provisions, a saving clause, and a provision regarding long-term care facilities’ sanitation procedures. The Government has not explained why Congress would have used these ancillary provisions to house what can only be characterized as a ‘fundamental detail’ of the statutory scheme. Had Congress wanted to grant CMS power to impose a vaccine mandate across all facility types, it would have done what it has done elsewhere—specifically authorize one. “
In an email to LifeNews, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert praised the high court for its ruling on the business mandate.
“The Supreme Court correctly concluded that the federal administrative state has no authority to treat unvaccinated employees like workplace hazards and to compel employers to carry out the government’s unlawful national vaccine mandate,” he said. “The Biden administration’s mandate would have a profoundly negative effect on those employers and the 80 million American workers who are affected, and that is why the Supreme Court was right to immediately halt its enforcement.”
Meanwhile, health care workers in multiple states have filed lawsuits, especially against states ignore their religious freedoms.
As Liberty Counsel says:
The state is ignoring federal law by removing religious exemptions and accommodations from unlawful COVID shot mandates for health care workers, many of whom have already been terminated from employment. In addition, these health care heroes cannot simply walk across the street to a different health care provider to obtain alternative employment.
Governor Mills has created a situation where no religious objectors to the COVID shot can obtain employment in the state.
The Supreme Court needs to resolve the splits in the circuits and the lower courts. Only Maine, New York, and Rhode Island have state executive orders banning employers from even considering the sincere religious beliefs of employees. Governor Mills threatened to revoke the business license of any employer that granted an employee a religious exemption, thus ordering employers to disobey the federal law known as Title VII. However, states do not have the authority to order employers to disobey Title VII federal employment law that prohibits religious discrimination.
The Supreme Court needs to resolve the splits in the circuits and the lower courts. Only Maine, New York, and Rhode Island have state executive orders banning employers from even considering the sincere religious beliefs of employees. Governor Mills threatened to revoke the business license of any employer that granted an employee a religious exemption, thus ordering employers to disobey the federal law known as Title VII. However, states do not have the authority to order employers to disobey Title VII federal employment law that prohibits religious discrimination.
All health care workers are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which does provide for religious exemptions and accommodations and requires that employers provide them. Furthermore, COVID shots cannot be mandatory under Title VII. Religious exemption requests for shot mandates must be accommodated when a reasonable accommodation exists without undue hardship to the employer. Many people hold sincere religious beliefs against taking any vaccines, or taking those derived from aborted fetal cell lines, or taking those sold by companies that profit from the sale of vaccines and other products derived from abortion.
Further, all health care workers in Maine that are employed by the state also have protection for the exercise of their sincerely held religious beliefs under the First Amendment. These employees do not shed their constitutional rights upon entering government employment. Maine law provides a long-established common law right to all individuals to refuse unwanted medical care.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The Supreme Court must put an end to these unconstitutional mandates and stop Governor Janet Mills from ignoring federal law and forcing health care workers to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. There can be no dispute that Maine is required to abide by federal law that provides protections to employees who have sincerely held religious objections to the COVID-19 shots. It is time for the High Court to stop this unlawful mandate against all these health care workers who have become constitutional orphans in their own state.”
