SCOTUS to Hear Challenges to Biden’s Vax Mandate

CLAY: The Supreme Court is going to hear two different challenges to Joe Biden’s attempted covid vaccine mandate. This is going to be a big deal. I believe it is significant that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear these cases.

Now, I understand that a lot of you don’t follow many Supreme Court cases necessarily on an aggressive timeline like I might or other people who are interested in particular aspects of cases. But let me sort of give you a read of why I think it’s significant that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear both of these cases in early January.

Without diving into the incredibly complex nature of procedural posture in courts, circuit courts on a federal level are the highest level courts beneath the Supreme Court. And so depending on what state you’re in — for instance, I’m in Tennessee. I am a licensed attorney in Tennessee. We’re a part of the Sixth Circuit. It involves multiple different states — are in the Sixth Circuit. Southern Texas, Louisiana, other states are in the Fifth Circuit.

Well, the covid vaccine mandate has made it to the circuit court level in the Fifth Circuit. And the Fifth Circuit ruling came out and said we don’t agree with Joe Biden’s ability to implement these covid vaccine mandates through OSHA for all employers with a hundred or more people. We believe that he has overreached constitutionally and he does not have the authority to mandate this as a president under a regulatory agency like OSHA.

The Sixth Circuit, not the full Sixth Circuit, just a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit, disagreed with that Fifth Circuit opinion and by a 2-1 judge verdict they put back in place and said Joe Biden does have right now the constitutional authority to implement this mandate.

So we are left now is the Supreme Court has come in and taken these conflicting circuit court opinions and said we are going to determine what the law is as it persons to Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate. And I believe it is a really good sign that the Supreme Court has taken these cases. I think it is very likely that they are going to follow the same sort of rubric that they did in the cases surrounding — do you remember when the CDC was putting in place the eviction moratorium? And the Supreme Court said, no, this extends beyonds where the CDC’s powers lie, the regulatory agency is not able to have that expansive of an authority. And so they struck it down. And they also cited the fact that there would have been more legitimacy for that CDC decision if instead of it coming directly from the CDC by itself in Congress had also authorized that mandate.

And so why I think this is significant is — and I accuse touched on this a bit in the past couple of weeks — when the United States Senate voted 52 to 48 against Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, they’re now not only are United States courts that are saying this is unconstitutional under OSHA to attempt to do it, there now is a legislative body in the Senate that has said, “We reject Joe Biden’s ability to implement this federal vaccine mandate for employers of over a hundred employees.” And so I believe this is really significant.

I think if you read the tea leaves here the Supreme Court is going to strike down Joe Biden’s mandate. Now, so far the Supreme Court has been more lenient when it comes when it comes to state and local regulations that are implemented by governors or mayors and/or even universities. But I think the federal vaccine mandate being implemented under OSHA is going to be struck down. This is a significant detail that they have taken up this case.

One way to think about it is given the Sixth Circuit ruling which was governing today, if the Supreme Court had not taken up this case, then the Sixth Circuit ruling as the highest court in the land that had ruled in that scenario would have continued to govern. A lot of times when courts take circuit court opinions and decide to rule upon them, they are inclined to overturn what the circuit court has done, not to mention you have a split in circuit court authority where the Sixth Circuit said one thing, the Fifth Circuit said another, the Supreme Court effectively, as the supreme law of the land, likely feels a necessity of coming up with a rule and a policy and an opinion that can govern the entire country.

So I wanted to mention that that is going on, that that is significant.