Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to President Biden's vaccine mandate, which requires businesses with 100 or more employees to have employees vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. 

“Today’s decision is 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 National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)'s small business legal center. “As small businesses try to recover after almost two years of significant business disruptions, the last thing they need is a mandate that would cause more business challenges."

After the ruling was released, U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh issued a statement saying he was disappointed with the decision and that it was a "major setback to the health and safety of workers across the country."

"The emergency temporary standard is based on science and data that show the effectiveness of vaccines against the spread of coronavirus and the grave danger faced by unvaccinated workers," he said. "The commonsense standards established in the ETS (Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard) remain critical, especially during the current surge, where unvaccinated people are 15-20 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated people. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) will be evaluating all options to ensure workers are protected from this deadly virus."

NFIB originally filed a legal challenge against the mandate in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the ETS is unconstitutional and requested a stay of the mandate. After the Sixth Circuit lifted the stay, NFIB filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting an immediate stay of OSHA’s emergency temporary standard.

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NFIB’s legal challenge argues three main points:

• OSHA needed to use the typical notice-and-comment procedure for the mandate to gather input.
• A nationwide COVID-19 vaccine and testing mandate, monitoring, and database is fundamentally a policy decision that should be left to Congress.
• The mandate will result in unrecoverable compliance costs, lost profits, lost sales, and further exacerbate the labor shortage for small businesses.

In his statement, Walsh pointed out that COVID-19 is infecting more than 750,000 Americans each day and has taken the lives of nearly a million Americans.

“We urge all employers to require workers to get vaccinated or tested weekly to most effectively fight this deadly virus in the workplace. Employers are responsible for the safety of their workers on the job, and OSHA has comprehensive COVID-19 guidance to help them uphold their obligation," he said. “Regardless of the ultimate outcome of these proceedings, OSHA will do everything in its existing authority to hold businesses accountable for protecting workers, including under the Covid-19 National Emphasis Program and general duty clause.”