Using its increasingly notorious “shadow docket,” the United States Supreme Court recently stayed operation of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) had imposed on large (more than 100 employees) employers nationwide. See National Federation of Independent Businesses v. OSHA, ___ S. Ct. ___, 2022 WL 120952
In Hayes v. University Health Shreveport, LLC, 2022 WL 71607 (La. Jan. 7, 2022), the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that a hospital – or any other private employer – may impose an absolute vaccination requirement and fire any employee who fails to comply. The case involved medical centers that notified all employees that they
Today’s somewhat unusual guest post is by Reed Smith‘s Matt Loughran. It concern’s the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to permit the government to continue enforcement of its requirement that healthcare workers (at least those in facilities that accept Medicare/Medicaid, which is most of them) be vaccinated to avoid infecting themselves and their patients
Now in this Winter of Covid discontent, made inglorious by the silliness and selfishness of anti-vaxxers, we warm ourselves with a look back at how a court dismantled the absurd arguments challenging vaccine mandates. Sure, we have written about similar cases a lot lately – here for example. “Yet once more, O ye laurels, and
Recently, when we have spoken of vaccine litigation, it has mostly been about challenges to public health policies requiring vaccination against COVID-19 for healthcare workers, students at public universities, etc. We have been pleased to report that these challenges have been failing without lingering too long at the trial court level, like here, here
We told you that if anti-vaxxers found a sympathetic court in their quest to declare government vaccine mandates unconstitutional, we would let you know. Well, we did not think it would be so soon. And we surely did not think that the sympathetic court would be the United States Supreme Court.
Don’t get the wrong
Maybe we’ll keep writing about Covid-19 cases as long as there is Covid-19. That’s a depressing thought. It is depressing because Covid-19 continues to harm so many lives, both in terms of destruction and diminution. It is also depressing because so many legal challenges to Covid-19 regulations are frivolous. You might even say those challenges
California is called the land of fruits and nuts, but the Harry and David Company – esteemed purveyor of fruits, nuts, and other delicacies – calls Oregon its home. Oregon gave us Tonya Harding and Ndamukong Suh. Oregon is also the only state besides New Jersey that forbids motorists from pumping their own gas.
We
We observed in a recent post that the constitutionality of government vaccine requirements really should not be controversial, and after reporting recently on yet another case upholding such requirements, we expressed our hope that we would not be writing much further on them.
Well, here we are, writing again on government vaccine requirements—as we did
We have tried to be pretty balanced in addressing a number of decisions over the last few months relating to lawsuits brought by the euphemistically labeled “vaccine hesitant” and their brethren who advocate aggressively for entitlement to “alternative” medical treatments like anti-parasitic (veterinary) drugs. We have been restrained in treating these lawsuits as having been