According to www.washingtonpost.com/…, “conservative Supreme Court justices on Friday appeared skeptical that the Biden administration has legal authority to impose a broad vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers, casting doubt on President Biden’s most ambitious plan to fight the pandemic.
But there was a different reaction to the administration’s vaccine mandate for health-care personnel that receive federal Medicaid and Medicare funds. Some of the justices who expressed doubt about the general workplace requirements seemed more receptive to the idea that health-care workers could be required to get vaccinated.”
Some of this is not unexpected from the conservative Supreme Court justices, who had no problems with expanded Executive powers during the trump administration, but who now sing a very different tune.
But Justice Gorsuch drew a lot of attention and raised eyebrows today, for two reasons —
- He did not wear a mask to court, when other justices and attending reporters and attorneys did.
- He falsely argued that "the flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year" as a way to downplay COVID.
These two actions drew scathing reactions from luminaries around the nation and rightfully so.
The flu statement is patently false even though it is taken as gospel in right-wing media. Is this what conservative SCOTUS justices have stooped to? Repeating right-wing disinformation when hearing and deciding on monumental cases that affect the lives of millions of people?
Gorsuch even laughed when attorney Prelogar said that “this is a terrible pandemic”, responding with “what about the polio or the flu?” It is the kind of juvenile statement one might hear from tucker or hannity.
Is it even worth it pointing out the truth to Gorsuch, who has a Harvard Law degree and a PhD from Oxford and who surely knows what the truth is about COVID vs flu vs polio?
P.S. OSHA can regulate flu exposure in the workplace too, if necessary.
Did Gorsuch reveal himself today for who he is?
Many of the arguments from the right were laughable, but that never stops them.
From Slate on the broader attitude and implications of the naked partisanship of the conservatives in the SCOTUS —
The nihilism, hypocrisy, and armchair epidemiology on display at times bled into rank anti-vax-ism.
The conservative supermajority did not bother to conceal its contempt for the Biden administration’s effort to root new policies in old statutes.
As the basis for its employer mandate OSHA cited a federal law that permits it to issue an “emergency temporary standard” when it determines that it’s “necessary” to protect employees from a “grave danger” resulting from “physically harmful” “agents” or “new hazards.” The coronavirus is both an infectious “agent” and a “new hazard” that poses a “grave danger.” So OSHA’s vaccinate-or-test regime fits pretty neatly into Congress’ mandate.
But the Republican-appointed justices appeared to begin with the premise that existing law could not possibly authorize this rule, then worked backward to justify their skepticism.
To be clear, it is not a vaccine mandate; one can opt to be tested instead of getting vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the right-wing noise machine is in full gear viciously attacking the liberal justices on the bench. Because, that’s what they are paid and programmed to do.
Is this a sign of how SCOTUS is going to deal with future cases in 2022? Blatantly using right-wing talking points and disinformation to justify their decisions? Will ideology trump the constitution and the common good? Is this a naked power grab, a way to kneecap Biden/Harris and Democrats?
How do we arrest this descent into madness and fascism?
What do you think?
P.S.
A reader pointed out that according to the audio of the hearings reported by www.washingtonpost.com/..., Gorsuch said “flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year” while the transcript says “hundreds of thousand”.
Does that let him off the hook? Not really, he was purposefully trying to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19. Even if he believes that flu kills hundreds (?) or thousands of people, COVID has officially killed 859,046 (the actual number is much higher) in less than two years. How does that make COVID not unprecedented?
