A divided U.S. Supreme Court blocked the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s push to get more people vaccinated amid a Covid-19 surge, rejecting an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that would have required 80 million workers to get shots or periodic tests, Bloomberg News reported. The court let a separate rule take effect requiring shots for workers in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments from the federal government. The ruling on OSHA limits Biden’s options for increasing the country’s vaccination rate as the omicron variant propels a spike in cases. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says only 63% of the country is fully vaccinated and of that group just 37% have received a booster shot. More than 800,000 people in the U.S. have died from the virus. “Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly,” the court said in an unsigned opinion. The court’s three liberals — Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — dissented. The decision “stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID–19 poses to our nation’s workers,” they said in an unusual joint opinion. Biden said in a statement that he was disappointed the court blocked “common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law.” He said it was now up to states and private employers to determine whether to institute such requirements to keep their workplaces safe.
