The Supreme Court's Incoherent COVID Mandate Rulings

Here’s the quick and dirty take of the U.S. Supreme Court’s two COVID-shot mandate decisions on Thursday: If one works for a private company with more than 100 employees, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) may not order them to get jabbed with a COVID shot, but if you’re a health care worker at a health facility that receives Medicare and Medicaid funding, you can. Apparently, Americans cease to have bodily integrity and religious rights if they work at hospitals that serve Medicare and Medicaid patients, but not if they work for private companies. There’s a word for that: incoherent. This duplicity has Chief Justice John Roberts’ fingerprints all over it. Americans who believe in freedom breathed a sigh of relief that the nation’s highest court retained the stay issued on OSHA’s rule forcing employers to require them to get a COVID shot. It turns out, the justices reasoned, that if Congress or states don’t explicitly give OSHA the power to order mandatory shots, and there was plenty of congressional intent and action proving they didn’t want it, the executive branch agency can’t. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain’s “work-around” for Congress by issuing vaccine mandate edicts throughout agencies didn’t work.-- More...