Doughty blocked the requirement for similar reasons. In the Louisiana case, brought by 14 states, Judge Terry A. Louis, declined to stay that ruling while an appeal moved forward. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Schelp ruled that the administration had exceeded its statutory authority in issuing the requirement and that it had not followed proper procedures in doing so. In the Missouri case, brought by 10 states, Judge Matthew T. The second set of cases the court agreed to hear concerns a requirement that health care workers at hospitals that receive federal money be vaccinated against the coronavirus.įederal judges in Missouri and Louisiana blocked the requirement, which has exemptions for people with medical or religious objections, in rulings that apply in about half of the states. “Vaccines are freely available, and unvaccinated people may choose to protect themselves at any time.”Īlmost immediately, more than a dozen challengers asked the Supreme Court to block the measure. “The mandate is aimed directly at protecting the unvaccinated from their own choices,” she wrote. Larsen wrote that the administration “likely lacks congressional authority” to impose the vaccine-or-testing requirement. “To protect workers, OSHA can and must be able to respond to dangers as they evolve.” “The record establishes that Covid-19 has continued to spread, mutate, kill and block the safe return of American workers to their jobs,” Judge Jane B. “Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends,” the court said in August in an unsigned opinion, over the dissents of the three liberal justices. The last time the Supreme Court considered a Biden administration program addressing the pandemic - a moratorium on evictions - the justices shut it down. The answer will mostly turn on the language of the relevant statutes, but there is reason to think that the court’s six-justice conservative majority will be skeptical of broad assertions of executive power. But the new cases are different, because they primarily present the question of whether Congress has authorized the executive branch to institute the requirements. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state vaccine mandates in a variety of settings against constitutional challenges. It “will save hundreds or even thousands of lives each month,” the administration wrote in an emergency application. The second measure requires health care workers at hospitals that receive federal money to be vaccinated against the virus. The administration estimated that the measure would cause 22 million people to get vaccinated and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations. The more sweeping of the two measures, directed at businesses with 100 or more employees, would affect more than 84 million workers and is central to the administration’s efforts to address the pandemic. The court’s decision to hear arguments on the applications may have been a response to mounting criticism of that practice.
#LIMBO 2 BLOCKS FULL#
The justices had not been scheduled to return to the bench until the following Monday.īoth sets of cases had been on what critics call the court’s shadow docket, in which the court decides emergency applications, sometimes on matters of great consequence, without full briefing and argument. The court said it would move with exceptional speed on the two measures, a vaccine-or-testing mandate aimed at large employers and a vaccination requirement for certain health care workers, setting the cases for argument on Friday, Jan. WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said on Wednesday evening that it would hold a special hearing next month to assess the legality of two initiatives at the heart of the Biden administration’s efforts to address the coronavirus in the workplace.
0 kommentar(er)
