When President Biden tried to make all businesses with more than 100 employees have to make their employees get vaccinated or get tested, the US Supreme Court said no.
People who work in the United States would have been affected by the new policy, which would have affected about 84 million people. This is a big setback for Biden’s plan to get more people vaccinated as the Covid wave spreads across the country.
More than 63% of the people in the United States are fully vaccinated, according to John Hopkins University. In the world, it is ranked 59th. It is behind almost all of its wealthy Western peers.
Supreme Court: Biden’s other vaccine requirement for workers at federally funded health care facilities was upheld in a separate ruling by the Supreme Court.
Dissecting the choice
Six right-leaning justices voted against the large company vax-or-test mandate, while three liberal justices voted in favour of it. This split the court along ideological lines.
The conservative justices said that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which was in charge of enforcing the mandate, doesn’t have the power to regulate “public health more broadly.” They said that the mandate only applied to workplace hazards. There are people who don’t think that Covid-19 is just a risk at work.
Even though Covid-19 is a risk at many places of work, it is not an occupational hazard in most. In most cases, Covid-19 can and does spread in homes, at school sports events, and anywhere else people meet.
Even though some businesses don’t want you to get vaccinated, some are making you get them anyway
In a memo written this week, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby praised his company’s vaccine policy for “saving lives.” This is what he said.
0 of the 3,000 people who had Covid at the time of his writing were hospitalised.
It was not until last September that all United employees had to get vaccinated against Covid or die from the virus, Kirby said.
Tyson Foods, Google, and a lot of other big companies have also made their employees get a vaccine before they can work there. Those who haven’t been vaccinated will be put on unpaid leave and then fired at the end of this month, so they won’t get paid.