The justices at the nation's highest court
said the mandate exceeded the Biden administration's authority.
Separately they ruled that a more limited
vaccine mandate could stand for staff at government-funded healthcare
facilities.
The administration said the mandates would
help fight the pandemic.
President Biden, whose approval rating has
been sagging, expressed disappointment with the decision "to block
common-sense life-saving requirements for employees".
He added: "I call on business leaders
to immediately join those who have already stepped up - including one-third of
Fortune 100 companies - and institute vaccination requirements to protect their
workers, customers, and communities."
Former President Donald Trump cheered the
court's decision, and said vaccine mandates "would have further destroyed
the economy".
"We are proud of the Supreme Court
for not backing down," he said in a statement. "No mandates!"
The administration's workplace vaccine
mandate would have required workers to receive a Covid-19 shot, or be masked
and tested weekly at their own expense.
It would have applied to workplaces with
at least 100 employees and affected some 84 million workers. It was designed to
be enforced by employers.
Opponents, including several Republican states and some business groups, said the administration was overstepping its power with the requirements, which were introduced in November and immediately drew legal challenges.
In the
end, Joe Biden's vaccine mandates stood or fell based on judicial
interpretations of federal statute, not principles of individual liberty or
appeal to the greater good.
According
to a majority of the Supreme Court, Mr. Biden had the law on his side when
ordering healthcare workers to get vaccinated, but using a 51-year-old
workplace safety statute to implement a vaccine-or-test requirement on all
large employers was a bridge too far.
Once
again, the current balance of the Supreme Court comes into sharp relief, with
four reliably conservative justices, three reliable liberal ones, and two -
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh - at the ideological
fulcrum.
This mixed
judicial bag is just the latest setback for a presidential Covid-response plan
that frequently has seemed a step behind the latest twists in the pandemic. The
administration was slow to encourage boosters and caught flat-footed by the
Omicron-induced surge in demand for testing.
Now Mr. Biden will either have to convince Congress to act on mandates - an unlikely
prospect gave the brick wall the rest of his agenda keeps hitting in the
Senate - or figure out new ways to shepherd the nation out of the pandemic
gloom.
In a 6-3
decision, the justices agreed with that argument, saying that the workplace
safety rule for large employers was too broad to fall under the authority of
the Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration to
regulate workplace safety.
"Covid-19
can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere
else that people gather," the court's majority wrote.
"That
kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all
face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases."
"This
is no 'everyday exercise of federal power,'" they added. "It is
instead a significant encroachment on the lives - and health - of a vast number
of employees."
The more
limited rule concerning more than 10 million staff at healthcare facilities
that receive government funding did not pose the same concern, they decided, by
5-4.
That said imposing conditions on recipients of public money fit "neatly" into the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The rulings come as some parts of the
policies were due to go into effect this week. The court heard arguments in the
case on Friday.
The rulings reflected the political
make-up of the court, which now has a majority of justices appointed by
Republican presidents.
The court's three liberal justices opposed
blocking the vaccine mandate, saying such a decision "stymies the federal
government's ability to counter the unparalleled threat that Covid-19 poses to
our nation's workers."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice
Brett Kavanaugh, seen as moderates in the conservative majority, joined the
liberals in allowing the healthcare rule to stand.
The decision comes as the US experiences
another wave of Covid-19 infections, with the Omicron variant spurring record
cases and hospitalization rates.
The Biden administration had estimated
that instituting a vaccine requirement at big employers would save 6,500 lives
and prevent 250,000 hospital admissions over six months.
More than 60% of Americans are fully
vaccinated already. Independent of the government's regulations, some
companies, including Google, Citibank, and IBM, have started to move forward with
their own requirements.
But the National Federation of Independent
Businesses, a lobby group that was one of the lead plaintiffs challenging the
government's workplace vaccine rule, had charged that it would burden
small-business owners with new compliance costs, make it harder to fill
positions and lead to lost profits and lost sales.
"Today's decision is a welcome relief
for America's small businesses, who are still trying to get their business back
on track since the beginning of the pandemic," said Karen Harned,
executive director of the group's legal arm.
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