Court followed law on vaccine ruling
Re: “High court halts Biden’s shot rule,” Front Page, Jan. 14; “Biden clashes with Supreme Court’s agenda” Nation, Jan. 15; and “Biden regroups after court loss on vaccines,” Coronavirus, Jan. 15:
These articles reported on the U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration exceeded its statutory authority by mandating that employers with 100 or more workers require vaccination or regular testing of employees for COVID-19.
Most of the reported responses to the court’s decision were negative, and all of the criticisms were based on policy and political considerations rather than statutory authority.
The dissenting justices were reported to have opined, “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.”
The gist of that contention is that because only health experts are competent to make decisions about public health, the authority to implement their decisions should be immune from court review since judges are not health experts. That analysis focuses on the wisdom of the policy and ignores the issue of legal authority to mandate the policy.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University Law Center, was reported to have asserted, “The conservative majority is willfully trying to make it hard, if not impossible, for the federal government to safeguard the public’s health and safety” and the court “in a very highly partisan way, intentionally tried to handcuff the president in doing what he needs to do.”
Those assertions focus on partisan political considerations and ignore the issue of statutory interpretation on which the court focused.
A spokesperson for the Service Employees International
Union said, “In blocking the vaccine or test rule for large employers, the court has placed millions of other essential workers further at risk, caving to corporations that are trying to rig the rules against workers permanently.”
That statement focused on the effect on public health of the court’s decision and the alleged political bias that influenced the decision, ignoring the issue of OSHA’S legal authority to issue its mandate.
In its opinion, the court stated, “The challenges posed by a global pandemic do not allow a federal agency to exercise power that Congress has not conferred upon it,” and, speaking for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote: “The question before us is not how to respond to the pandemic, but who holds the power to do so.”
Those statements succinctly and lucidly identify the issue in the case and explain the basis of the court’s decision. They also provide a rudimentary explanation of the function of the U.S. Supreme Court in our government of enumerated and separated powers: The court does not make policy and political choices; it determines whether the government official or agency that seeks to impose such a choice has the constitutional or statutory authority to do so.
The story “Biden clashes with Supreme Court’s agenda,” begins with this statement: “The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a fresh reminder of its power to thwart President Joe Biden’s agenda.”
A more accurate statement would be the court delivered “a fresh reminder” that government officials may not act arbitrarily, even if well-intentioned, but must act in accordance with law. This principle is the reason our system is described as a government of laws, not of men. That description is referred to commonly as the rule of law.
The rule of law occasionally causes inconveniences and creates inefficiencies, but it always prevents authoritarian rule.