The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers, parts of which were set to go into effect on Monday.
Here’s what it means for companies.
The government could try again with a new rule.
Devising a more tailored emergency rule for a specific set of higher-risk companies, addressing the court majority’s criticism of the employer mandate as a “blunt instrument,” could be quick. Or the agency could use the traditional rule-making process, but that might take years.
Employers can still enforce their own mandates, but it may be more fraught.
The blocking of a federal rule subjects larger employers to a patchwork of city and state vaccine rules, which would have been pre-empted by a single federal rule. New York City, for example, requires all on-site workers to be vaccinated, while Florida passed a law banning such requirements. And the administration’s…
