SCOTUS has already ruled that the ability to force a vaccination on a populace is a state power: Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The wording references the state, not the federal government.
The reason the Biden admin is going for the OSHA angle is exactly because of that. However, I'm not sure how OSHA is going to justify forcing vaccination on workers because of work place safety. First, over half the population is unemployed or unemployable. Even during times of full employment only half the population is capable of working. OSHA's requirement of vaccination would not protect workers outside of the work place when the threat is omnipresent. Second, the vaccination is a permanent safety measure with potentially damaging effects that intrude upon workers private lives. Forcing vaccination on workers would be akin to requiring them to wear safety gear 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives to protect "workers". Third, I'm not sure how OSHA is going to argue that the vaccination protects workers when the vaccination loses efficacy over time and does not entirely stop infection or transmission and in some studies it appears the vaccine is beginning to have the opposite effect by increasing a person's ability to be infected.
The three points above, conceived by me a lay person, are probably why OSHA hasn't come out with any regulatory guidance no matter how much the Biden admin bluffs and bullies it's constituency. I can only imagine that lawyers are coming up with even more arguments to blow holes in the Biden's faux authority that it wants to grant itself.
SCOTUS has already ruled that the ability to force a vaccination on a populace is a state power: Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The wording references the state, not the federal government.
The reason the Biden admin is going for the OSHA angle is exactly because of that. However, I'm not sure how OSHA is going to justify forcing vaccination on workers because of work place safety. First, over half the population is unemployed or unemployable. Even during times of full employment only half the population is capable of working. OSHA's requirement of vaccination would not protect workers outside of the work place when the threat is omnipresent. Second, the vaccination is a permanent safety measure with potentially damaging effects that intrude upon workers private lives. Forcing vaccination on workers would be akin to requiring them to wear safety gear 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives to protect "workers". Third, I'm not sure how OSHA is going to argue that the vaccination protects workers when the vaccination loses efficacy over time and does not entirely stop infection or transmission and in some studies it appears the vaccine is beginning to have the opposite effect by increasing a person's ability to be infected.
The three points above, conceived by me a lay person, are probably why OSHA hasn't come out with any regulatory guidance no matter how much the Biden admin bluffs and bullies it's constituency. I can only imagine that lawyers are coming up with even more arguments to blow holes in the Biden's faux authority that it wants to grant itself.