The Supreme Court did, however, give the administration more leeway in the healthcare industry, allowing it to impose a vaccine mandate on more than 10 million healthcare workers whose facilities participate in Medicare and Medicaid, a decision that preserves one part of the president's Covid-19 playbook.
The private-employer requirements, which would have applied to businesses with 100 or more employees, would have affected an estimated 84 million workers. In an unsigned opinion, the court's conservative majority stated that the Biden administration did not have the unilateral authority to impose a mandate that employers ensure their employees were vaccinated or tested for Covid-19 every week. Three liberal justices voted no.
The private-employer rules were issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in November. Several parts of the regulations, including the requirement for unvaccinated workers to wear masks in the workplace, were set to go into effect this week, though the testing requirements weren't expected to be enforced until next month.
According to the unsigned majority opinion, the vaccinate-or-test rule appears to far exceed the authority Congress granted OSHA when it established the agency in 1970.
The court stated that "the Act empowers the Secretary [of Labor] to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures." However, while Covid-19 is transmitted at work, it also spreads "at home, in schools, at sporting events, and everywhere else people congregate." "That kind of universal risk is no different than the day-to-day dangers that we all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases," the court said, and, like those other hazards, is beyond OSHA's jurisdiction.
However, the court stated that the agency retains the authority to act in workplaces that are particularly vulnerable to the contagion, such as those with "particularly crowded or cramped environments" or where researchers work with infectious agents.
Dissenting Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan wrote in a joint opinion that the pandemic was exactly the type of emergency that Congress intended OSHA to address.
"If OSHA's Standard is broad—applying to many millions of American workers—it merely reflects the magnitude of the crisis," they wrote. They wrote that the virus spreads most easily "in the shared indoor spaces that are the hallmark of American working life." "The evidence is all around us: most Americans' workplaces have been transformed since the disease's onset."
The dissenters argued that it is perverse to prevent OSHA from addressing a workplace hazard simply because the danger exists outside of the workplace.
Conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined three liberals to form a 5-4 majority, allowing the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers to go into effect nationwide.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued the mandate, which does not include a testing alternative, and stated that facilities that accept money from those programs must comply. That mandate had been in effect in only half of the states due to conflicting lower court rulings.
In another unsigned opinion, the high court stated that the secretary of health and human services has broad authority to ensure that healthcare providers who care for Medicare and Medicaid patients protect their patients' health and safety.
"COVID–19 is a highly contagious, dangerous, and potentially fatal disease, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid patients," the majority wrote, noting that healthcare workers and public-health organizations overwhelmingly supported the mandate.
"Indeed, their support suggests that, under these circumstances, a vaccination requirement is a straightforward and predictable example of the health and safety regulations that Congress has authorized the Secretary to impose," the court said.
Dissension was expressed by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas stated that the Biden administration had not made a strong showing that the "hodgepodge of provisions" on which it relied provided legal support for a national vaccine requirement.
In a second dissent, Justice Alito stated that even if the administration had the authority to require vaccinations for healthcare workers, the mandate was unconstitutional because the government did not seek public comment before forcing "more than 10 million healthcare workers to choose between their jobs or an irreversible medical treatment."
In a statement, President Biden said the Supreme Court's decision to allow the healthcare vaccine mandate "will save lives," but he was disappointed that the court blocked "common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law."
"It is now up to states and individual employers to decide whether to make their workplaces as safe for employees as possible," Mr. Biden said, urging "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."
Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, declined to comment on whether the administration would pursue a more targeted vaccine mandate.
"Today's decision protects our individual rights as well as the rights of states to pursue the solutions that work best for their citizens," said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who led a coalition of Republican-leaning states that challenged the OSHA rule.
The court's actions come as Covid-19 is spreading at unprecedented rates in the United States. Republican-led states and business groups sued to block the federal requirements, claiming the Biden administration was engaging in illegal overreach that was not justified by the public-health crisis.
Technically, the Supreme Court was not debating the merits of the administration's mandates in their entirety. Instead, the justices heard the cases on an emergency basis to determine whether the regulations could be implemented immediately while more detailed litigation continued in the lower courts.
Last August, a conservative high court skeptical of broad federal power stopped the administration from enforcing an eviction ban during the pandemic.
The court has been more accepting of Covid-19 mitigation measures implemented at the state and local levels, such as vaccination mandates for healthcare workers and college students.