January 14, 2022:- Last year, President Biden issued a vaccine mandate through the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA). The regulation that OSHA issued would have required employers with 100+ employees to ensure that their employees either received vaccination against COVID-19 or to wear masks and undergo weekly testing. Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a stay of OSHA’s regulation, effectively putting an end to it.
The case is NFIB v. Dept. of Labor, 595 U.S. _____ (2022).
The court pointed out that COVID-19 is a life hazard, not an occupational one:
Although COVID–19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases.
Congress gave OSHA the limited task of regulating workplace safety, not the unlimited task of regulating the safety of society as a whole:
Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life—simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock—would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization.
The court pointed out the difference between job-specific risks and the general, everyday risks that we all face both at work and elsewher:
That is not to say OSHA lacks authority to regulate occupation-specific risks related to COVID–19. Where the virus poses a special danger because of the particular features of an employee’s job or workplace, targeted regulations are plainly permissible… But the danger present in such workplaces differs in both degree and kind from the everyday risk of contracting COVID–19 that all face.
Again, the statutes that Congress has enacted that give OSHA the legal authority to issue regulations confine that authority to occupational safety, not to safety in general. If Congress wishes to give OSHA the authority to regulate the safety of everyone, everywhere, all the time, then Congress needs to do so via statute. OSHA cannot just give itself that power, even at the direction of the President. The court’s decision recognizes this basic principle of the separation of powers.
By the way, here in Massachusetts, according to the Department of Health dashboard, the number of people currently in hospital with COVID-19 is 3,180. Of that number, 1,505 (approximately half) are fully vaccinated.
Peter Vickery, Esq., 