Vaccination has become a politically polarizing problem in the United States
Washington:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday appeared to be divided over President Joe Biden’s Covid vaccination or testing mandate for companies with liberal judges who strongly favor and conservatives who express skepticism.
But a majority of the nine judges appeared to support a government requirement that health professionals in institutions receiving federal funding get their injections.
After months of public appeals to Americans to get vaccinated against Covid-19, which has killed more than 830,000 people in the United States, Biden announced in September that he was mandating vaccinations at companies that employ 100 or more employees. to have.
Unvaccinated workers should present negative tests weekly and wear face masks at work.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a federal agency, has given companies until February 9 to comply with the rules or risk fines.
Vaccination has become a politically polarizing topic in the United States, where 62 percent of the population is vaccinated.
A coalition of 26 business associations filed suit against OSHA regulations, and the conservative-dominated Supreme Court agreed to hold an emergency hearing and also hear arguments over the vaccine mandate for health professionals, which is being challenged by Republican state lawmakers.
The court’s three liberal judges appeared to be strongly in favor of both mandates.
“Why isn’t this necessary to reduce the serious risk?” Justice Elena Kagan asked the lawyer of trade associations who opposed the policy.
“This is a pandemic where nearly a million people have died,” Kagan said. “It is by far the greatest public health threat this country has faced in the past century.
“And this is the policy most focused on stopping all of this.”
Scott Keller, a former attorney general in Texas who represents the company groups, said the rule requiring Covid vaccinations at companies with 100 or more employees would cause many employees to quit.
“An economy-wide mandate would lead to permanent displacement of workers, which would ripple through our national economy,” Keller said.
Ohio Attorney General Benjamin Flowers also opposed the OSHA rule, saying it was “not really intended to regulate a workplace hazard.”
After a remote telephone testimony following a positive Covid test, Flowers said Covid is a “risk we all face — when we wake up, when we’re with our family, when we stop to get coffee on the way to work.” .”
Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that there was “urgent urgency to address the problem” of the pandemic, but joined other conservative judges on whether it should be federal authorities responding with mandates.
“This is something the federal government has never done before, right, mandatory vaccination coverage?” he asked.
“Traditionally, states have had a responsibility to oversee vaccination mandates,” said Judge Neil Gorsuch, also a conservative.
‘Not some kind of newfangled thing’
Judge Stephen Breyer, a Liberal, responded to Keller’s claims that many people could quit their jobs if they had to get vaccinated.
“Some people might quit, maybe three percent,” he said.
“But more may stop if they find that they have to work with unvaccinated others because that means they can get the disease,” Breyer said.
Republican lawmakers and business owners have argued that mandatory Covid shots are an infringement of individual rights and an abuse of government power.
But Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar, advocating for the Biden administration, said a vaccination mandate is “not some kind of newfangled thing.”
“Most of us are subject to mandatory vaccination requirements at various points,” Prelogar said.
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill argued against the health worker vaccination mandate, calling it a “bureaucratic power move that is unprecedented.”
Murrill, who also testified from a distance, said health workers would be forced to undergo “an invasive, irrevocable forced medical treatment, a Covid injection”.
The conservative judges in the court seemed more receptive to the government’s arguments to demand vaccinations for health workers.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly, possibly within days.
Companies with 100 employees or more represent about two-thirds of the private sector workforce in the United States, or about 80 million people.
The mandate for health professionals would cover about 10 million people.
The Supreme Court has six conservative judges and three liberal judges, and they’ve all been vaccinated and given booster shots.
If the court blocks vaccination mandates, it would be a major blow to Biden, who has made getting the pandemic under control one of his priorities but is battling a spate of cases of the Omicron variant.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
