The United States Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Joe Biden’s decision to impose the Covid vaccine on companies with more than 100 employees, inflicting a major setback to the Democratic president’s efforts against the pandemic.
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The high court, on the other hand, validated the vaccination obligation for employees of health structures who benefit from federal funds.
After months of trying to convince the reluctant, Joe Biden announced in September that he wanted to make vaccination compulsory for several categories of employees.
In the land of individual freedoms, this measure was immediately denounced as an abuse of power by elected Republicans and by part of the economic world.
The Supreme Court agreed with them on Thursday, at least with regard to the approximately 84 million people employed in companies with more than 100 employees.
The administration has “ordered them to be vaccinated against Covid or undergo testing weekly, at their own expense. It is not the daily exercise of federal power, but an intrusion into the life and health of a large number of employees,” she wrote in her judgment.
The decision was taken with a majority of six out of nine magistrates, all conservatives. The three progressive judges of the Court having expressed their opposition.
The latter, on the other hand, received the support of two of their conservative colleagues to save the obligation to vaccinate in health centers, which concerns around 20 million people.
Joe Biden has made the fight against the pandemic one of his priorities, but is facing an outbreak of contamination under the effect of the Omicron variant.
The United States, where only 62% of the population is fully vaccinated due to very marked political divisions on the issue, has so far recorded more than 845,000 deaths.