OSHA "Workaround" Goes Down, 6-3

Health Worker Mandate Remains

We’ll have to wait for analysis, but here are three quick tweets from Jonathan Turley:

Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley

As predicted earlier, the Supreme Court stayed the OSHA mandate but let the health care mandate stay survive. The more significant decision was the OSHA ruling. However, the Administration came with one vote of losing both cases.

jonathanturley.orgThe Vaccine Mandate: The Supreme Court Considers a Trip To “Major-Questions-Land”Below is my column in the Hill on the vaccine mandate cases before the Supreme Court. Businesses and groups are still waiting to see if the Supreme Court will issue an injunction in the OSHA case. …

Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley

This is a huge loss for the Biden Administration obviously. The Administration has racked up an impressive list of losses in court.

jonathanturley.orgSupreme Court Delivers New Rebuke to the Biden Administration in Reinstating the “Remain in Mexico”The Biden Administration has racked up a long line of losses in federal courts in what is one of the worst records in the first six months of any modern presidency. While most Administrations tend …

Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley

...As I previously wrote, this is a "workaround" that would not work. Despite Chief of Staff Ron Klain's tweets, justices are not fond of "workarounds" of the Constitution. They prefer direct authority.

A quick scan of the opinion—which was delivered Per Curiam—provides this conclusion from Gorsuch’s concurrence (Thomas and Alito joining) which, I think, will in the end fairly sum up the Court’s reasoning as a bottom line:

The question before us is not how to respond to the pandemic, but who holds the power to do so. The answer is clear: Under the law as it stands today, that power rests with the States and Congress, not OSHA. In saying this much, we do not impugn the intentions behind the agency’s mandate. Instead, we only discharge our duty to enforce the law’s demands when it comes to the question who may govern the lives of 84 million Americans. Respecting those demands may be trying in times of stress. But if this Court were to abide them only in more tranquil conditions, declarations of emergencies would never end and the liberties our Constitution’s separation of powers seeks to preserve would amount to little.

All in all this is a major victory for our constitutional order, for federalism, for reason.