Biden has other ways to boost vaccination rates
Redesigning rejected rule among possible options
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court’s rejection Thursday of a federal vaccination requirement for most workers stripped away President Joe Biden’s most effective tool in increasing vaccination rates, which experts said are nowhere close to what’s needed for a return to normalcy.
Biden has made vaccines the centerpiece of his COVID-19 strategy, so what does the White House do next?
Biden suggested it is now up to states and businesses to ramp up vaccination rates, while he remains on the sidelines as cheerleader in chief.
“The court has ruled that my administration cannot use the authority granted to it by Congress to require this measure,” Biden said in a statement, “but that does not stop me from using my voice as president to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans’ health and economy.”
Others said the president has more options, including requiring vaccinations for domestic air travel and crafting a more narrowly targeted workplace rule.
Labor Department Secretary Marty Walsh said in a statement the agency “will be evaluating all options to ensure workers are protected from this deadly virus.”
The Biden administration’s vaccine requirement, implemented by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and rolled out in November, was aimed at preventing workers from spreading infections among themselves and customers. OSHA is the federal agency charged with regulating workplace safety.
Under the rule, workers were supposed to get vaccinated or be tested at least weekly for the coronavirus, starting Feb. 9. As of Monday, unvaccinated workers were required to wear masks.
The Labor Department estimated the rule would have saved thousands of lives and prevented more than 250,000 hospitalizations during the six months after implementation.
“Workplace transmission has been a major factor in the spread of COVID-19,” said Dr. Gerald Harmon, president of the American Medical Association, which supported the requirement.
The nationwide vaccination rate has been stuck at around 60% of the U.S. population.
At least 90% of the population needs to be either vaccinated or have some immunity from an infection to minimize the effects of COVID-19 on daily life, according to three experts who were on Biden’s COVID-19 transition team. They outlined that estimate and the importance of mandates in a paper this month in the Journal of American Medicine.
“Few countries have achieved such levels of coverage of any vaccine without vaccination requirements,” they wrote.
Biden required federal employees to get vaccinated. Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld his vaccination mandate for workers at health care facilities that serve Medicare and Medicaid patients. Legal challenges to Biden’s requirement for federal contractors are making their way through the courts.
The OSHA rule, which would have applied to businesses with 100 workers or more, would have ensured twothirds of the nation’s employees were covered.
It would have applied to state and local government workers in 26 states, including teachers and school staff.
The Supreme Court said Congress hasn’t given OSHA the broad authority to impose such a sweeping requirement.
As the court noted, a majority of the Senate voted against the regulation in December. Two Democrats – Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana – joined all Republicans to reject the rule.
“I have long said we should incentivize, not penalize, private employers whose responsibility it is to protect their employees from COVID-19,” Manchin said.
Georgetown University law professor David Vladeck, who supported the OSHA rule, said the agency is likely to seek another avenue.
“The risks in the workplace are far greater for most people than anywhere else,” he said. “So I don’t see OSHA just simply folding up its tent and saying, ‘Never mind.’ ”
David Michaels, an epidemiologist at George Washington University School of Public Health who led OSHA during the Obama administration, said the agency could rewrite the rule to narrow its focus to workplaces with the greatest risk of transmission.
Such a requirement could apply to sites where employers are together all day, particularly in structures with poor ventilation. In addition to factories with assembly lines, a more narrowly targeted requirement could apply to workplaces where there is contact with customers – such as retail establishments – and to businesses where remote work is not possible, Michaels said.
“If an employer told office workers in a crowded office that they must come and work in person, that would be a high-risk workplace as well,” he added.
The court’s ruling suggests some leeway for a narrower approach.
“Where the virus poses a special danger because of the particular features of an employee’s job or workplace, targeted regulations are plainly permissible,” the court said in its unsigned opinion.
The court cited regulating researchers who work with the COVID-19 virus and said the government could target workplaces with “particularly crowded or cramped environments.”
The head of the AFL-CIO, which supported the struck-down requirement, said the agency remains responsible for providing safe working conditions – and that goes beyond vaccinations. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said OSHA should issue an emergency standard to ensure at-risk workers are provided layers of protections, including improved ventilation, distancing, masking and paid leave.
Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and Georgetown University Law Center, said Biden should pivot to areas where he has clear constitutional authority.
The lowest hanging fruit, he said, would be to require vaccinations for domestic flights and other forms of public, interstate travel.
Gostin called the Supreme Court’s decision a “dagger in the heart of our COVID vaccination progress.”