Skip to main content

Happening Today: U.S. Supreme Court Set to Hear Arguments In Vaccine Mandate Cases


Today, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in two vaccine mandate cases currently pending before the Court.

The first case deals with a mandate issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that requires employers with 100 or more employees either require coronavirus vaccines as a condition of employment or require unvaccinated employees submit to weekly testing and mandatory mask wearing in the workplace.  As readers might recall, this mandate was previously stayed by the Sixth Circuit but later that stay was lifted.  The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently took up the appeal afterward.

The second case deals with a mandate issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that requires healthcare workers at hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, nursing homes, and other healthcare facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funds to receive the coronavirus vaccine or risk being terminated.  This mandate has been halted in about half the states while it remains in effect in approximately the other half.  The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently took up the appeal given this split among Circuits.

Now as a reminder, the Court is not issuing a ruling on either case today.  Today is only for oral arguments before eventual decisions are issued by the Justices.  However, heading into today’s arguments, it is too soon to predict which way the Court will rule on either case.  For those that follow today’s arguments, I would suggest you pay attention to the questions (and the tenor of the questions) from the Justices.  While that does not necessarily indicate which way a particular Justice will rule, it can be indicative of which way a particular Justice might lean.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more