By a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court has blocked President Biden's COVID-19 vaccine-or-test mandate for many employers but leaves a similar mandate for health care workers in place. Ohio was the leader of the 27 Republican-run states that opposed the mandate and brought it to the high court.
Attorney General Dave Yost said the ruling protects individual rights and freedom. After the arguments last week he said it wasn’t about whether vaccines work or if a mandate is a good idea, but that a mandate must be enacted by Congress, not an agency or the Biden administration.
“Once you give a bureaucrat the vast power to implement these kinds of mandates through the OSHA law, you'll never close that door. And that, my friends, is what this case is actually all about,” said Yost.
It was Ohio Solicitor General Ben Flowers who argued the case – he did so remotely since he had tested positive for COVID. The mandate would have applied to more than 80 million people working in businesses with more than 100 employees.
