THE QUESTION
Can the federal government require private companies to vaccinate their employees?
WHAT WE FOUND
Gostin and Peck both said yes, the federal government can legally require private company employees to get the COVID vaccine, and there's legal precedent in the Supreme Court.
Peck cited the 1905 Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, when a man fought to be exempt from a state-mandated smallpox vaccine. In a 7-2 decision, the court upheld that he could be required to get vaccinated during the ongoing epidemic.
"[The court said] this was an exercise of the state's authority to address the public health, and it was fully within their power to do so," Peck explained. "He claimed that there were religious reasons, there were just general liberty reasons, they rejected them all."
Peck and Gostin both also cited the Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) Act of 1970 as a legal standard for enacting these requirements. The act allows the Department of Labor to put in place standards for workplace health and safety that companies operating in the U.S. must follow.
Meanwhile, Burrus disagreed, saying the president doesn’t have the constitutional power to force a business to require vaccines, and called creating an OSHA rule to mandate vaccines "a stretch."
"[If] you have black mold in your office, OSHA might have jurisdiction over that," Burrus said. "Can they make you get a needle stuck into your arm? Those are the kind of lines that we draw on constitutional law, and I think a lot of judges will draw that line."
So without a consensus among experts, we can’t verify an answer on this right now. Both Peck and Burrus agreed that we're likely to see this one fought out in the courts.
Millions of American workers will be required to get COVID-19 vaccines under President Biden's new executive orders.
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