NEWS: The Supreme Court has granted a stay that stops the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from enforcing a requirement that employees at large businesses – those with 100 or more employees – be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing and wear a mask on the job.
As reported by the Associated Press, a 6-3 majority of the justices concluded that the Biden administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose OSHA’s vaccine-or-test rule on U.S. businesses with at least 100 employees. More than 80 million people in the U.S. would have been affected.
“OSHA has never before imposed such a mandate. Nor has Congress. Indeed, although Congress has enacted significant legislation addressing the COVID–19 pandemic, it has declined to enact any measure similar to what OSHA has promulgated here,” the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion.
In a dissent, three other justices argued that it was the court that was overreaching by substituting its judgment for that of health experts. “Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the Court displaces the judgments of the Government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies,” they wrote.
The League had previously alerted credit unions about OSHA’s rules, which would have applied to larger credit unions as well as other businesses nationwide. As we explained, a U.S. Court of Appeals in December allowed the OSHA rules for large employers to go ahead. The Supreme Court’s decision to grant the stay is effective immediately and will be in place while the Sixth Circuit reconsiders the merits of the case, meaning businesses do not presently need to comply with the OSHA rules. The stay will remain in place until the Supreme Court either denies further review or issues a subsequent decision in this case.