The Supreme Court of the United States struck down this Thursday the order of President Joe Biden, that required to be vaccinated or to present weekly negative results of covid-19 tests to employees of all companies with 100 workers or more. The presidential order was to begin implementation in February.
However, the highest court he did give the green light to another Biden mandate for employees of more than 50,000 health facilities to be vaccinated. They are those that receive federal subsidies from the Medicare or Medicaid programs, and in which some 17 million people work.
The setback to Biden had the support of all six judges in the conservative majority on the highest court in the country, while the three progressives issued an opinion contrary to the decision. The Court usually takes very few cases a year.
The argument used by the court to overturn the measure was that the federal government does not have sufficient authority to issue such an order, as pointed out by the business groups and the plaintiff states.
“(The mandate) is a significant invasion in the lives and health of a large number of employees,” they indicated from the Court.
On Friday of last week, at a court hearing, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Scott Keller of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, he had warned that Biden’s order would cause “massive economic change” in the United States and that many “workers are going to resign” so that they are not forced to be vaccinated.
In the case of the mandate that affects health workers, two of the conservatives (John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh) allied themselves with the progressives in their endorsement of the Biden measure, while the other four Conservatives opposed her.
The United States is the country with the most infections and deaths from the pandemic: more than 63 million cases of covid-19 and more than 800 thousand deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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