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Jan. 24, 2022 - Epoch Times
15:55
Supreme Court Blocks Vaccine Mandate on Businesses in All 50 States, Leaves Healthcare in Place
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Good evening.
Just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of blocking the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for American companies, meaning that the almost 84 million workers in this country who are facing the prospect of a vaccine mandate, well, they no longer are.
However, in a separate ruling that they made on the very same day, the Supreme Court also decided to allow the other vaccine mandate, the one that was specifically for healthcare workers, to remain in effect.
Let's go through these two rulings together and see what they actually mean.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion with two quick corrections.
In the comments section of yesterday's episode, a lot of people were correcting me, saying that Sydney was not the capital of Australia.
And of course, you are all correct, and I did misspeak.
The capital of Australia is, of course, Canberra, whereas Sydney is the capital of New South Wales.
However, in yesterday's episode, when we were discussing New South Wales, I called Sydney the Australian capital, which is, of course, incorrect, and I apologize for that.
The other thing that I wanted to clarify has to do with the vaccination rate.
In yesterday's episode, I mentioned that the adult vaccination rate in New South Wales is about 80%.
However, that is not accurate because 80% is the vaccination rate throughout all of Australia.
When you actually dig into New South Wales specifically, the vaccination rate among adults is closer to 93%.
So if you rewatched yesterday's episode, just keep that in mind.
And again, I apologize for making those two errors.
And now let's move on over and talk about the U.S. Supreme Court.
So last week, as you likely know, the legal challenges against two of the Biden administration's vaccine mandates were being debated before the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Essentially, what the Supreme Court did is that they rolled up two large cases into one, and they decided to hear them together.
The first case was in regards to the vaccine mandate that was issued by OSHA, which stands for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and that mandate was requiring that all businesses with over 100 employees, they must require their employees to get either vaccinated or to take weekly COVID tests to prove that they are negative.
Then the second case was in regards to the vaccine mandate that was issued by the CMS, which stands for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
And what that mandate required is that all healthcare professionals throughout the entire country who work at facilities that accept either Medicare or Medicaid funding, they must be vaccinated.
And so the plaintiffs in these two separate lawsuits, they made their cases last Friday in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
And then subsequently, just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued their first ruling on the matter.
And in that ruling, they for one blocked the OSHA mandate from going into effect, but at the same time, they decided to allow the healthcare mandate to stay.
Although it is worth noting that both of these two decisions that were made by the Supreme Court, they pertain to temporary injunctions, meaning that these two cases are not actually over.
It only means that as the OSHA case continues to be debated, the government cannot enforce their mandate on businesses.
However, while the CMS case moves forward, the government can enforce the healthcare mandate.
Now, as to who will ultimately win these two cases, well, that is yet to be decided.
Regardless, though, let's go through these two Supreme Court rulings together, starting with the one about OSHA. So in this case, the Biden administration was arguing that the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which is the piece of legislation that actually set up this bureau, called OSHA, And
they were likely to succeed.
And just for your reference, the six justices who voted against the mandate were all part of the conservative wing of the court, including Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Sam Alito, as well as John Roberts.
Whereas the three justices who voted in favor of the mandate, they were part of the liberal wing of the court, including Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Alina Kagan.
And so then in terms of the majority of the court, here is what they wrote in their majority opinion.
Quote,
However, there was a dissenting opinion, which was issued by the three justices who disagreed with the majority, and here's part of what that dissenting opinion had to say.
The minority is essentially saying here...
However, the majority in the Supreme Court, they issued a rebuttal of this point, saying this in part, quote, Not so.
It is the text of the agency's Organic Act that repeatedly makes clear that OSHA is charged with regulating occupational hazards and the safety and health of employees.
And right there is the crux of the issue.
Because the piece of legislation that OSHA came out of, it gives them the charge of regulating occupational hazards.
And the Biden administration, they were arguing that catching COVID qualified as being a work-related danger.
However, here again, the majority of the Corps disagreed.
Here's specifically what they wrote in their majority opinion.
Quote, We cannot agree.
Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most.
COVID-19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather.
That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases.
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 authorization.
And so, what this ruling actually means in practice is that the vaccine mandate on American businesses is officially blocked, while the case itself will go back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
And so, during the period while the case will continue to be litigated in court, the Biden administration cannot impose their vaccine mandate on American companies.
And as you can imagine, Mr.
Eric Schmidt, who is the Attorney General of Missouri, and he's one of the people who actually brought forth this challenge in the first place, well, he was rather pleased with the ruling.
Here's specifically what he said as a part of a statement.
The ruling is a massive win for millions of workers and businesses across the country, including Doolittle Manufacturing here in Missouri, who would have had to shutter their doors if this mandate was not halted.
However, it is worth noting that this ruling only stops the federal government from imposing a mandate on businesses.
It is still the case that some businesses across the country are choosing of their own volition to impose a mandate on their workforce.
And so, for instance, you have companies like Tyson Foods, Google, BlackRock, and so on and so on that are issuing vaccine mandates on their employees.
In fact, despite this ruling, starting today, on Friday, all unvaccinated employees at Citibank, they will be put on unpaid leave.
And then if they don't get vaccinated by the end of the month, they will be fired.
However, what you should know is that starting today, unless you happen to work in the healthcare field, if your employer tells you that they are imposing a vaccine mandate upon you because of OSHA, well, they are not telling the truth because as of yesterday, the OSHA mandate is officially blocked.
If you'd like to dig into the specifics of the Supreme Court's ruling on this matter, I'll throw a link to the majority and the minority opinions into the description box below this video for you to check out, and all I ask in return is that you take a quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Now, everything that we've discussed so far is in regard to the first case that was before the Supreme Court.
Now, let's move on over and discuss the second case, which was related to the CMS healthcare mandate.
What happened there was...
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And now let's move on over and discuss the second case, which was in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, which had to do with the healthcare vaccine mandate.
In that case, the majority of justices, they decided differently.
Since both Brett Kavanaugh as well as John Roberts, they decided to vote alongside the liberal justices in allowing the healthcare mandate to actually go through.
And their reasoning for doing so is that, in their opinion at least, which they formulated in their majority opinion statement, is that, Meaning, in plain English, That in their opinion, at least, the guiding statute of CMS would allow something like a vaccine mandate to go into effect.
And they wrote that even though a vaccine mandate requirement has never been imposed on healthcare workers before, well, here's specifically what they wrote.
We agree with the government that the Secretary's rule falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred upon him.
The rule thus fits neatly within the language of the statute.
After all, ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession.
First, do no harm.
It would be the very opposite of efficient and effective administration for a facility that is supposed to make people well to make them sick with COVID-19.
And so it appears that having read through both of these opinion statements, that the fundamental difference between the OSHA case and the CMS case, at least in the opinion of the majority of Supreme Court justices, is that the OSHA legislation did not grant the government the authority to impose a vaccine mandate, while the CMS legislation did grant them that authority.
However, not all justices agreed with that interpretation.
In fact, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Sam Alito, as well as Neil Gorsuch, they wrote a dissenting opinion in the CMS case, arguing that neither the Medicare Act nor any other law that's currently on the books grants the federal government the authority to impose a broad vaccine mandate.
Here's specifically where they wrote in their dissenting opinion, quote, These cases are not about the efficacy or importance of COVID-19 vaccines.
They are only about whether CMS has the statutory authority to force healthcare workers by coercing their employers to undergo a medical procedure they do not want and cannot undo.
Because the government has not made a strong showing that Congress gave CMS that broad authority, I would deny the state's pending appeal.
I respectfully dissent.
Regardless of this dissent, however, the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers can now go into effect while the cases are still playing themselves out in court, meaning that the ultimate decision as to whether this vaccine mandate is constitutional or not is yet to be decided.
But as it's being debated, you will have nursing homes, hospitals, as well as other facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding begin to impose the vaccine mandate on their employees.
And as you can imagine, the Biden administration's Secretary of Medicaid Services, she was rather pleased with this decision.
Here's specifically what she said in a statement following this ruling.
CMS is extremely pleased that the Supreme Court recognized CMS's authority to set a consistent COVID-19 vaccination standard for workers and facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid.
The bottom line is that vaccine requirements work and are an important tool to protect patients and also to keep our health care workers healthy.
And so to sum up everything that happened over at the Supreme Court yesterday, the OSHA vaccine mandate was blocked.
The health care mandate was allowed to stand.
However, both of these cases are now back in the lower courts to be litigated further.
And so perhaps in the coming weeks and months, we will have a final answer as to whether these vaccine mandates will remain in effect or not.
In the meantime, if you'd like to read the full opinion pieces, including both the minority and the majority opinions for both cases, I'll throw all that into the description box below this video so you can peruse them for yourself.
And all I ask in return is that, if you haven't already, take a super quick moment to smash, smash, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Now, since you've completed this episode of Facts Matter, I would highly recommend that you go on over to Epic TV if you'd like to go deeper into the subject of the legality of these mandates and check out an awesome episode of Truth Over News, where Jeff and Hans dissect some of the recent statements that came out of the CDC, and more specifically, how those statements undermine the supposed legal basis for all of these mandates.
Here's a trailer for that episode.
If you said that vaccines don't work to prevent the transmission of COVID, you were removed from Twitter.
If you said that the death rate from COVID was dramatically inflated by existing conditions, you were removed from Facebook.
If you said that we needed to have targeted protection rather than broad-based mandates and lockdowns, you were removed from YouTube and Google.
But those facts are exactly what the CDC director said during a series of interviews on January 9th and January 10th, when she was finally forced to admit what many of us have been saying for nearly two years.
And in making her admission, the CDC director destroyed the Biden regime's argument for vaccine mandates and implicitly acknowledged that we've been lied to for two years.
It's a scandal of immense proportions.
If you'd like to check out that full episode, as well as all the other phenomenal content over on Epic TV, I'll throw a link to it.
It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
Hope you click on it.
Hope you check it out.
Hope you subscribe.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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