By Donna Gitter
In 2021, the Supreme Court articulated in Tandon v. Newsom a legal principle that threatens to upend over a century of legal precedent recognizing the authority of state governments to ensure public health by mandating vaccines.
The ruling lays the groundwork for courts to force states to include religious exemptions to mandatory vaccines whenever they include secular exemptions, such as medical ones.
By Jennifer Bard
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages into its third year of global death and destruction, the Supreme Court of the United States has effectively thwarted every measure by federal or state government to implement the public health tools that for hundreds of years have been used to stop the spread of contagious disease. They have done so by operationalizing what were previously fringe and relatively harmless academic views in ways that extend their powers beyond any previous boundaries. These include, but are not limited to, extending the protection for religious exercise past any previously imagined, and limiting Congressional authority to respond to emergencies by imposing impossible standards of specificity on its delegation of authority to the agencies which it creates, funds, and directly oversees.
In so doing, the Court has not only undermined the health of the nation, and pushed millions of people into unnecessary long-term disability, which our fragmented health care and social security system is unequipped to handle. It has also threatened our national security by infecting what is already more than half of the children in the country with a virus that has the potential to damage every organ in their bodies, from heart to brain.
By Jennifer Bard
Friday’s emergency hearing by the Supreme Court regarding the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine-or-test mandate was extraordinary both in that it happened at all and what took place.
The hearing came in a response to a petition by a coalition of states and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) to halt an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) issued by OSHA mandating that all employers with over 100 employees “establish minimum vaccination standards” including “vaccination verification, face covering, and testing requirements.”
That the Court heard the case on an emergency basis signaled their concern that OSHA, in issuing the ETS, was overreaching its authority, as they ruled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had done in issuing an eviction moratorium.
But what made the colloquies particularly unsettling is that the ETS was carefully crafted to be, as Professors Larry Gostin and Dorit Rubinstein Reiss explain lucidly, well within contemporary standards for an exercise of federal power affecting a health matter usually within the jurisdiction of a state. It applies only to employers already obligated to follow OSHA workplace standards and fell far short of a vaccine mandate. Moreover, however severe the risk of COVID when this was drafted six months ago, the risk from the Omicron variant is many times greater.
Yet the sympathetic ear given by the majority of the Justices to the arguments made by the lawyers seeking a stay made it possible to wonder if the whole thing was happening in either one of DC or the MCU’s multiverse. This is because the questioning, directly and by implication, calls into doubt what past Courts have identified as the framework of federalism — a nickname for the Constitution’s balancing of a strong federal government against the rights of individual states. We cannot know the extent to which the Justices will adopt any of the arguments offered them for limiting federal agency power, but from this hearing we can anticipate substantial strengthening of an individual state’s ability to resist federal regulation.
By Wendy Parmet and Dorit Reiss
This Friday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about two federal vaccine mandates: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) mandate for health care workers, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine-or-test mandate for employers with over 100 workers. In each case, a key question will be whether the Court should apply the so-called “major questions doctrine.” The Court’s adoption of this approach in the mandate cases would not only remove an important tool for combating the pandemic; it also would severely limit the federal government’s capacity to address many other health threats, while expanding the Court’s ability to substitute its judgment for Congress’.
Although not fully defined or delineated, the major questions doctrine bars administrative agencies from using broad grants of statutory authorities in new and “major” ways. A type of clear statement rule, it requires courts to presume that in the absence of specific Congressional authorization, agencies lack the power to issue new regulations that could be seen as “major.”
In theory, the rule allows courts to avoid federalism and separation of powers concerns. In practice, it empowers courts to resurrect long-discarded approaches to federalism and separation of powers without saying so. It also enables courts to disregard explicit grants of statutory authority (so much for textualism!).
By Kaitlynn Milvert
On November 30, 2021, a federal district court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction to block the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) vaccine requirements for health care workers.
This ruling comes mere days before the December 6 deadline for employees of CMS-funded facilities to receive their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and it casts uncertainty over upcoming deadlines for vaccination compliance.
By Kaitlynn Milvert
When the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) published its “vaccine-or-test” requirements for large employers on November 5, 2021, it immediately faced backlash from many states.
In the weeks that have followed, states not only have filed numerous lawsuits challenging the OSHA requirements, but also have actively pushed through legislation that seeks to limit the scope or use of vaccine requirements in the workplace.
This new wave of state legislation contributes to a landscape of uncertainty surrounding the legal status of workplace vaccine requirements and available exemptions.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
By Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia
For Americans wary of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, like the sweeping requirements President Joe Biden announced Sept. 9, 2021, it seems there are plenty of leaders offering ways to get exemptions – especially religious ones.
No major organized religious group has officially discouraged the vaccine, and many, like the Catholic Church, have explicitly encouraged them. Yet pastors from New York to California have offered letters to help their parishioners – or sometimes anyone who asks – avoid the shots.
These developments point to deep confusion over how to win a religious exemption. So what are they, and is the government even required to offer the exemptions in the first place?
By Ross D. Silverman and Gabriel T. Bosslet
As COVID-19 vaccination mandates become increasingly common, we can expect exemption requests (and misuse) to become increasingly widespread, too.
Most entities requiring vaccination mandates or proof of vaccination upon entry may offer limited grounds upon which an individual may request an exemption, usually based upon religious beliefs or medical reasons. Recent history with childhood immunization programs shows less rigorously-structured and -enforced vaccination exemption policies are vulnerable to increased usage, relative to narrower or more stringently-monitored programs. That history also shows there is a possibility some health care licensees may be willing to support individuals seeking to circumvent COVID-19-related requirements through offering questionable medical exemptions.
Entities imposing COVID-19 vaccination mandates, and state health care licensure boards, can take several simple but significant steps to counter misuse of medical exemptions and better protect communities from COVID-19. These safeguards also can decrease the temptation for licensed health professionals to recklessly undermine critical, lawful, evidence-driven public health efforts.
By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss
Two major problems with granting religious exemptions to vaccine mandates are that they are very hard to police, and that they are routinely gamed.
Religious freedom is a core value in the United States. This makes policing religious exemptions to vaccination hard – and rightly so. The government policing people’s religion raises a number of thorny issues.
The problem is that the same people who eagerly promote anti-vaccine misinformation are just as eager to misuse religion to avoid vaccinating, and have no hesitation or compunction about coaching others to do the same. And without policing, it is easy for those misled by anti-vaccine misinformation to use the religious exemption.
By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss
On May 10, 2021 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to include children aged 12-15.
The vaccine was previously authorized for use in those aged 16 and older. The company has announced it will seek emergency use authorization for younger children by September.
Now that children over the age of 12 can get vaccinated against COVID-19, will immunization against SARS-CoV-2 become a requirement for the return to public schools this fall?
My answer: In the near term, we probably will not see COVID-19 vaccine mandates for school children. And in the longer term, it depends.
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