Last year, President Biden announced a sweeping COVID vaccine mandate for businesses across the United States employing 100 or more workers. This vaccine mandate came in spite of Biden promising during the 2020 presidential election to not implement vaccine mandates.

The 46th president stated he'd have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) enforce the mandate for workers to either vaccinate against COVID or undergo virus testing on a weekly basis.

Immediately, this mandate faced a heap of backlash from the political right, religious groups, and business companies. These parties vowed legal action; Biden's response to this backlash was daring anti-mandate folks to "have at" their legal challenges against his directive.

On Thursday, everyone who opposed Biden's sweeping mandates breathed a sigh of relief.

No deal on Biden's OSHA vaccine mandate

This week, the United States Supreme Court determined OSHA does not have the authority to implement public health policy.

The nation's high court furthermore decided COVID remains a risk of "universal" nature, not an occupational risk that OSHA would have authority over.

Additional statements from the Supreme Court determined that allowing OSHA to implement such a mandate would take them beyond the authority granted to them by Congress.

However, the Supreme Court did, in fact, choose to uphold Biden's COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. This will impact significantly fewer Americans than the mandate for big businesses would have.

Reactions to the Supreme Court's verdict

Conservatives cheered the Supreme Court for striking down Biden's OSHA vaccine mandate. However, many folks on the right also stated SCOTUS should have done the same for the vaccine mandate extending to healthcare workers across the country.

Meanwhile, left-wingers expressed ire and fury. They accused the Supreme Court of putting lives at risk by not upholding the mandate; however, these accusations don't hold up against the fact that COVID vaccines do not stop virus infection or transmission.

Since Democrats failed to get their way, they also renewed calls to pack the Supreme Court with left-wing justices. The White House correspondingly released a statement, noting Biden's dismay in the Supreme Court ending his highly opposed OSHA mandate.