After SCOTUS' Hit, Companies are Ditching Their Vaccine Mandates Like a Bad Habit

Thanks to the United States Supreme Court’s epic hit, Dementia Joe’s OSHA vaccine mandate has been struck down. But even as far back as December, the handwriting was on the wall. After the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the preliminary injunction on the OSHA mandate back in November, companies like General Electric and Union Pacific decided to put a pause on their push to force-vaccinate employees. Others have since followed suit.

From NBC News:

A growing number of health care systems and other companies, including Amtrak and General Electric, are suspending mandates that require employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

The move follows court rulings in recent weeks that paused such requirements from the Biden administration for health care workers and federal contractors. Still, the decision about whether to require vaccinations remained up to individual employers.

The mandates are being suspended at a precarious time: Many employers face labor shortages, while Covid cases are surging and the highly mutated omicron variant is spreading.

Enough with the scare tactics, as everybody and their mother knows that omicron is the closest variant to the common cold. In the world of COVID, while cases and hospitalizations may be surging, deaths are not rising. The Biden administration has lost its cudgel, and the media has lost its narrative.

Huzzah.

While one SCOTUS decision was reason to celebrate, the justices still upheld Biden’s CMA vaccine mandate which affects healthcare workers. So, sadly, doctors, nurses, and emergency personnel are still subject to suspension and termination if they refuse to get the jab. However, certain hospitals and medical centers have decided that the staffing shortages are too big a price to pay, and are forsaking the ill-advised mandates.

Bravo to them.

Sufficient staffing has been hard to maintain in hospitals, which were already contending with a dearth of nurses and other workers before the pandemic. Burnout has further exacerbated shortages.

That most likely factored into some health care systems’ choices to reverse vaccination mandates, said David Barron, a Houston-based employment attorney.

“Most employers do not have the luxury of losing 5 percent or 10 percent or whatever percent of their workforce doesn’t want to get vaccinated,” said Barron, who works with the law firm Cozen O’Connor. “In this environment, it’s very tough, especially in jobs like health care or other industries where it’s a very tight labor market.”

Cleveland Clinic, which has 19 hospitals, was among the health care systems that announced this month that it would pause its vaccination policy. About 85 percent of Cleveland Clinic employees have been vaccinated, a spokesperson said, and those who have not are being tested periodically. Cleveland Clinic said in a statement that it continued to “strongly encourage” all employees to get vaccinated.

Strong encouragement we can take. It still gives a person a choice. Mandates do not.

While this SCOTUS decision now gives companies freedom to go their own way, as RedState reported last month, certain companies are content to keep their mandates, which were crafted before Biden’s executive order in place. This is all with Biden’s blessing, of course.

President Biden on Thursday appealed to states and companies to require people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus despite the Supreme Court blocking his vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) mandate, blocking it from taking effect while other legal challenges play out. The rule would require companies with at least 100 employees to require workers either provide proof of vaccination or provide weekly negative coronavirus test results and wear face coverings to work.

“As a result of the Court’s decision, it is now up to States and individual employers to determine whether to make their workplaces as safe as possible for employees, and whether their businesses will be safe for consumers during this pandemic by requiring employees to take the simple and effective step of getting vaccinated,” the president said in a statement.

The president vowed to put pressure on companies to voluntarily create their own vaccine-or-test requirements.

He said the Supreme Court ruling “does not stop me from using my voice as President to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans’ health and economy.”

“I call on business leaders to immediately join those who have already stepped up – including one third of Fortune 100 companies – and institute vaccination requirements to protect their workers, customers, and communities,” Biden added in his statement.

Some companies like Siemens Healthineers will continue to triple and quadruple down on forcing vaccinations and firing the employees that will not comply, as Ophelia, now a former Siemens Healthineers employee who refused the jab, informed me.

“Unfortunately, Siemens-Healthineers made it very clear that their new policy will not change due to any of the rulings from SCOTUS,” she wrote.

What will other corporations do? Only time will tell. But I suspect more dominoes will fall in the direction of ditching the vaccine requirements as the fake COVID narratives continue to crash and burn. Lawsuits and bad PR will only help that along.