Conservative justices seem skeptical of Biden vaccine mandates

 Conservative members of the Supreme Court on Friday appeared skeptical of Biden administration policies that impose a COVID-19 vaccine-or-test requirement on broad swathes of the U.S. workforce.

During several hours of oral arguments, the court’s conservative majority posed sharp questions about whether a federal workplace law that Congress passed some five decades ago provides the legal authority for a vaccine-or-test policy affecting roughly 84 million workers at large employers.

The conservative justices also appeared wary, though slightly less so, of a separate coronavirus vaccine mandate that applies to the roughly 17 million health care workers at hospitals and other facilities that receive federal funding through the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The tenor of Friday’s back-to-back arguments suggested a split along familiar ideological lines. Questions posed by the court’s six conservative justices reflected concerns about granular details like the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines in preventing the spread to others, as well as broader structural issues like how public health authority fits within the country’s constitutional framework.

“It seems to me that the more and more mandates that pop up in different agencies, it's fair -- I wonder if it's not fair for us to look at [this] as a general exercise of power by the federal government and then ask the questions of, well, why doesn't Congress have a say in this, and why don't the -- why doesn't this be the primary responsibility of the states?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked the solicitor general. 

The court’s three liberals appeared primarily concerned with the public health impact that might result from blocking the administration’s policies while challenges proceed in the lower courts. 

Justice Stephen Breyer, addressing an attorney for one set of challengers to the employer vaccine-or-test mandate, said he found their request to block the policy “unbelievable” in light of the soaring infection rates amid the spread of the omicron variant. 

“How can it conceivably be in the public interest,” he asked. “You have the hospitalization figures growing by factors of 10, 10 times what it was. You have hospitalization at the record, near the record.”

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/588774-conservative-justices-seem-skeptical-of-biden-vaccine-policies