Neither sleet nor snow nor COVID-19 stops Supreme Court from its appointed rounds

It snowed in Washington, D.C., over January 6 and 7, and all federal buildings were shut down except for the U.S. Supreme Court, which makes its own hours and rules. The Court had set a special Friday calendar (an event even rarer than a live Friday night talk show) to consider two employment-related challenges to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 regulations and decide whether they should be blocked while the legal cases proceed.

In the first case, a number of states (including Ohio and Louisiana) and several business groups took issue with the mandate that all employers with 100 or more employees must require either (1) vaccinations or (2) weekly testing and mask wearing. The states argued the regulatory bodies exceeded their power by imposing the requirements, while the business groups claimed they were prohibitively burdensome.

The second case opposed a Biden rule requiring the vaccination of all healthcare workers in facilities participating in the Medicare or Medicaid programs, a measure affecting 10 million workers. The opponents argued that, especially in rural areas, the rule would lead to more employment vacancies in a job sector already facing massive personnel shortages.

Before the merits were ever reached, the COVID-19 omicron variant loomed over the Court. Heretofore only Justice Sonia Sotomayor had worn a mask on the bench, and during the vaccine mandate hearing, she took the bench virtually from chambers down the hall. She suffers from diabetes and is therefore at greater risk of catching the virus. All the other justices were masked except for Neal Gorsuch.