The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling blocking the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers with 100 or more employees cites White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain’s Twitter as evidence that the federal government was actively seeking to circumvent normal regulation powers to force COVID-19 shots on Americans.
Klain retweeted a September comment from MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle claiming that OSHA’s emergency temporary standard is the “ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.” Rhule’s tweet came shortly after Biden directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to create a rule forcing private businesses to require the jab.
Justice Neil Gorsuch referenced Klain’s seemingly wholehearted endorsement of this smug prediction in his concurrence published on Thursday as proof that Congress was not involved in giving OSHA authority to mandate private medical decisions.
According to the Trump appointee, “It seems, too, that the agency pursued its regulatory initiative only as a legislative ‘work-around,'” thus invalidating it.
The citation in Gorsuch’s opinion refers to a petition to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 12, 2021, which originally cited Klain’s retweet as evidence that “the Administration pored over the U.S. Code in search of authority, or a ‘work-around,’ for imposing a national vaccine mandate.”
“On September 9, 2021, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle’s tweet that stated, ‘OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations,'” a footnote attached to “work-around” in the petition states.
