The main topic of discussion is the Supreme Court’s cancellation of vaccines and weekly check-ups against the coronavirus mandate for businesses. According to the mandate, OSHA would become the regulatory body for compliance with the rule at any enterprise with more than 100 employees. Contrary to the acute coronavirus situation, the Supreme Court recognized that OSHA exceeded its authority since the right to comply with such a mandate should remain with the employer.
One of the points of view is that the COVID situation is getting worse, and the mandate was a logical continuation of Biden’s policy to combat coronavirus. According to CNBC’s analysis of Johns Hopkins University data, more than 731,000 new daily infections were registered in seven days, which is 4% more than the previous week (Kimball, 2022; January 25, para. 11). However, during the discussion, the point of view was expressed that the decision to comply with the mandate should not be binding but remain with the employer.
The main argument is that such measures are too radical, and the picture of the disease cases is not considered entirely. The Supreme Court also agrees with this opinion, which concluded that ETS went beyond the regulation of workplace safety and entered the territory of broad public health measures (Bickel et al., 2022). The court also explained that coronavirus infection was included in universal risk diseases and could be compared with the risk of everyday dangers, which has nothing to do with the employee’s workplace (Bickel et al., 2022). The final argument against the mandate’s introduction may be that OSHA did not have enough historical practice to conduct such a broad experiment. This leads to the logical conclusion that the court’s decision and the point of view expressed in the discussion are fully justified and have much more negative sides than it seems at first glance.
References
Kimball, S. (2022). Biden administration withdraws Covid vaccine mandate for businesses after losing Supreme Court case. CNBC. Web.
Bickel, L., Foster, R. K., & Hirano A. T. (2022). U.S. Supreme Court stays implementation of OSHA’s COVID-19 ETS requiring vaccination or weekly testing policy. The National Law Review, 7(16).