Pretty sure @Shyster had this. The OSHA bit was never going to work.
It could have not been opposed
Yeah, and maybe tomorrow rainbows and unicorns will fly out of my butt.
My comments on the decision:
This is not a decision as to whether vaccines are a good idea, or whether Covid is a serious disease, or whether states and businesses have the power or ability to require their employees be vaccinated. It's whether Congress, when it passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act around 50 years ago, empowered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to mandate vaccination as a condition of employment when, in the past 50-year history of that statute, OSHA has never before claimed such a sweeping authority. The Court held it does not:
The question, then, is whether the Act plainly authorizes the Secretary’s mandate. It does not. The Act empowers the Secretary to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures. See 29 U.S.C. § 655(b) (directing the Secretary to set “occupational safety and health standards” (emphasis added)); § 655(c)(1) (authorizing the Secretary to impose emergency temporary standards necessary to protect “employees” from grave danger in the workplace). Confirming the point, the Act’s provisions typically speak to hazards that employees face at work. See, e.g., §§651, 653, 657. And no provision of the Act addresses public health more generally, which falls outside of OSHA’s sphere of expertise.
. . .
The Solicitor General does not dispute that OSHA is limited to regulating “work-related dangers.” She instead argues that the risk of contracting COVID–19 qualifies as such a danger. We cannot agree. Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases. Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life—simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock—would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization.
. . .
It is telling that OSHA, in its half century of existence, has never before adopted a broad public health regulation of this kind—addressing a threat that is untethered, in any causal sense, from the workplace. This “lack of historical precedent,” coupled with the breadth of authority that the Secretary now claims, is a “telling indication” that the mandate extends beyond the agency’s legitimate reach.
(Some citations omitted.) As explained by the concurring opinion of Justice Gorsuch (joined by Thomas and Alito):
The question before us is not how to respond to the pandemic, but who holds the power to do so. The answer is clear: Under the law as it stands today, that power rests with the States and Congress, not OSHA. In saying this much, we do not impugn the intentions behind the agency’s mandate. Instead, we only discharge our duty to enforce the law’s demands when it comes to the question who may govern the lives of 84 million Americans. Respecting those demands may be trying in times of stress. But if this Court were to abide them only in more tranquil conditions, declarations of emergencies would never end and the liberties our Constitution’s separation of powers seeks to preserve would amount to little.
Under our system of government, the mere fact that something is a good idea doesn't mean that the fedgov has the power to do it. And it certainly doesn't mean that a regulatory agency can do something without being empowered to do so by Congress, no matter how laudable the goal may be. And this decision does not block other means for vaccine mandates. Congress may, if it so chooses, amend the OSH Act to give the power to mandate vaccinations to OSHA. In more than two years of the pandemic, it hasn't done so. States may pass their own laws to mandate vaccination for employees. Businesses may choose to require their employees be vaccinated. There are other options that may be pursued. But OSHA doesn't have the authority unless Congress acts.