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WASHINGTON — Supreme Court on Thursday Biden’s administration blocked With coronavirus cases from the Omicron variant rising, a blow to a key element of the White House’s plan to address the pandemic is from forcing a vaccine or testing authorization for major employers.

But court in a modest victory for President Biden more limited authority allowed require vaccination of healthcare workers in federally funded facilities.

The vote in the employer attorney case was 3 to 6, with the opposition of liberal judges. Voting in the healthcare case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh joined the liberal judges to form the majority.

The employer’s decision undermined one of President Biden’s most important attempts to tame the virus, leaving the country largely untouched by state laws and policies, leaving companies and businesses on their own.

In his statement, the President welcomed the decision in favor of the decision, saying it would save the lives of healthcare workers and patients. But he said he was disappointed that the court overturned his employer mandate, which he said was “based on both science and law.”

In both employer and healthcare worker cases, judges investigated whether Congress had authorized the executive branch to take sweeping action to address the healthcare crisis.

The unsigned majority opinion in the employer’s case said a statute on workplace hazards did not justify a mandate that required more than 80 million workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or to wear masks and be tested on a weekly basis. He also stressed the novelty and scope of the mandate given by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, saying that Congress did not authorize the agency to act, calling its response a “blind tool.”

The majority opinion noted that the authority made “no discrimination based on industry or risk of exposure to Covid-19”, adding that it was a “significant encroachment on the lives and health of many workers”.

But the opinion said more specific regulations might be legal given that “most lifeguards and laundry attendants face the same regulations as paramedics and meat packers.”

In the dissenting opinion, Judges Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they did not believe the court’s willingness to undermine “the federal government’s ability to counter the unique threat that Covid-19 presents to our nation’s workers.”

Three dissenting judges wrote that regulating workplace safety is exactly what OSHA was ordered to do.

They agreed that the key issue in the case is institutional competence to address the healthcare crisis.

Underlying everything else in this dispute is one simple question: Who decides how much and what kind of protection American workers need from COVID-19? Is it a Congress and presidential mandate with expertise in workplace health and safety? Or A court that has no knowledge of how to protect workplaces and is insulated from responsibility for the damage it causes?”

The smarter way they wrote would have been to defer to OSHA.

“In the face of a still-ongoing epidemic, this court has told the agency tasked with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all workplaces where it is needed,” said dissidents about the majority’s actions in the National Independent Trade Federation case. v. Ministry of Labour, No. 21A244. “As sickness and death continue to rise, this court tells the agency it cannot respond in the most effective way possible.”

OSHA released the mandate in November, making exceptions for workers with religious objections and those who do not have close contact with other people in their jobs. Management guessed He said it will lead to 22 million vaccinations and 250,000 hospitalizations to be prevented.

The decision means companies across the country now have to decide between retaining their employees and having the potential to lose staff who do not and do not comply with patchwork regulations.

Some big companies like United Airlines and Tyson Foods already had powers, while others waited and waited for the legal battles to be resolved. Some companies are worried about losing employees at a time when workers are already scarce. A national requirement could have helped alleviate these concerns, although authoritative firms said these concerns were largely unrealized.

Walmart, Amazon, and JPMorgan Chase, three of the largest employers in the United States, have yet to release broad terms for their employees. Some companies pending have expressed concern about the costs of setting up testing programs and the backlash from unvaccinated employees.

This second authorization applies to those working in hospitals and other healthcare facilities that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Federal judges in Missouri and Louisiana had blocked the waiver requirement for those with medical or religious objections in decisions applied in about half of the states. It will now take effect nationwide.

In an unsigned opinion in the case, Biden v. Missouri, No. 21A240 wrote that the health service mandate granted by the majority, the secretary of health and human services “is within the scope of the powers conferred on it by Congress.”

The statute in effect gives the secretary general authority to enact regulations to ensure the “effective administration” of Medicare and Medicaid programs, and the various facility sections of the statute also generally empower the secretary to set requirements to protect health and safety. of patients.

The majority wrote that the mandate “fits perfectly with the language of the statutes.”

The majority added that facilities that receive money from the Medicare and Medicaid programs must comply with many federal health and safety requirements.

“Perhaps this is why health professionals and public health organizations overwhelmingly support the secretary’s rule,” the majority wrote. “In fact, their support demonstrates that a vaccination requirement under these circumstances is a simple and predictable example of the ‘health and safety’ regulations that Congress has the power to impose on the secretary.”

In dissent, Judge Clarence Thomas, joined by Judges Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, wrote that the “messy provisions” in the statute did not justify his term.

Judge Thomas wrote that without the “extremely clear” consent of Congress, the federal government should not be allowed to force health workers to “choose between losing their livelihoods and succumbing to a vaccine they have been rejecting for months.”

“These cases are not related to the efficacy or importance of Covid-19 vaccines,” he wrote. “They simply relate to whether the agency has the legal authority to “compel healthcare professionals by forcing them to undergo a medical procedure they don’t want and can’t take back.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state vaccination guidelines in various settings against constitutional challenges. The two cases that were settled on Thursday concerned a different question, namely whether Congress gave the executive branch the power to set requirements.

In the case against healthcare workers, the majority opinion seemed to try to harmonize the two decisions.

“The challenges posed by a global pandemic do not allow a federal agency to exercise power that Congress has not given it,” the vision said. “At the same time, such unprecedented circumstances provide no justification for limiting the use of powers deemed long held by the agency.”

Emma Goldberg and Lauren Hirsch contributing reporting.