The Supreme Court voted 6-3 Thursday that it will not allow the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine-or-test Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to be enforced. Supreme Court Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagen dissented in the Jan. 13 opinion.
The ETS required workers at companies with 100 or more employees to either be fully vaccinated or tested for COVID at least weekly.
The Supreme Court, in its opinion, said the Secretary of Labor lacked the authority to issue such a mandate, even through the OSH Act’s emergency temporary standard exemption.
“The Secretary has ordered 84 million Americans to either obtain a COVID-19 vaccine or undergo weekly medical testing at their own expense,” the Court said in its opinion. “This is no ‘everyday exercise of federal power.’ It is instead a significant encroachment into the lives – and health – of a vast number of employees.”
SCOTUS added that the OSH Act, which established OSHA in 1970, empowers the Secretary of Labor “to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures.”
The dissenting Justices argued that OSHA did what Congress mandated it to do – “It took action to address COVID-19's continuing threat” in the workplace, adding that the ETS falls within the agency’s mission, which is “to ‘protect employees’ from ‘grave danger’ that comes from ‘new hazards’ or exposure to harmful agents,” the dissenting Justices wrote.
“Yet today the Court issues a stay that prevents the Standard from taking effect,” the dissenting Justices added. “In our view, the Court’s order seriously misapplies the applicable legal standards. And in so doing, it stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID-19 poses to our nation’s workers. Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the Court displaces the judgments of the government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies. We respectfully dissent.”
