The court determined that Congress did delegate that authority to CMS, but did not delegate the authority for that broad of a mandate to OSHA. In fact, in the OSHA decision, the Court stated that it might permit a much more narrowly drawn mandate by OSHA to survive, if it only applied to people in certain close quarters, etc.
I don't agree that either of them should have been permitted on constitutional grounds, but it is incorrect for the article to discuss this as if the dividing line between the two cases was constitutional. It was not.
I hate to get personal or overly simplistic, but was this an example of how John Roberts like to split the difference, avoid sweeping landmark decisions, as we have heard sometimes with other cases?
In this case, the court overturned one set of regulations, but upheld them in another situation, the situation with healthcare workers.
And so then John Roberts can claim he’s not a knee jerk conservative,when he’s criticized by the liberal pundit class, he and his defenders can point to decisions such as this one as evidence of how open minded he is, etc.
The fact that the SCOTUS decided that the HHS has control of over the bodies of medical workers based on their interpretation of the enabling legislation is a defacto approval of its Constitutionality.
I’d love for someone on the SCOTUS to point which of the enumerated powers permits the federal government to impose medical mandates on anyone.