Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over efforts to overturn two major Biden Administration policies designed to raise coronavirus vaccination rates: its vaccine-or-testing mandate aimed at large employers and a vaccination requirement for some health care workers, the New York Times reported. The hearing comes as the country is facing a surge in COVID cases and the White House wrestles with how to manage this phase of the pandemic. It could be the “most important day for public health in a century,” according to Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown. It boils down to whether the federal government has the authority to impose these mandates, a question the Supreme Court has not yet considered in other challenges. The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration says it has the power via a 1970 law that allows it to issue emergency rules for workplace safety. Opponents, which include some states, trade groups and companies, say that the mandates should be left to legislation, not executive action. The court’s six-justice conservative majority may be skeptical of broad assertions of executive power. The last time the Supreme Court considered a Biden administration policy addressing the pandemic — a moratorium on evictions — the justices shut it down. A decision in favor of the mandate would mean that, by Jan. 10, large companies must have policies in place that require employees to be vaccinated or tested weekly. They must be following those policies by Feb. 9.
