gorsuch, and barrett. two rulings, the government cannot enforce the osha requirement that applied to 100 million workers in private industry, but can enforce the second measure. now, that one was already enforced in about half the states, hallie. it had been blocked in other half. so, now the government can enforce the health care measure nationwide. pete, stand by. peter, let me go to you. unless i m mistaking, i understand the press secretary will be briefing in a moment at the white house. i think that s exactly right. today she is scheduled to be joined by the national security adviser, jake sullivan, where there are other issues to be addressed. this will be front and center when she takes the podium in the next couple of minutes. clearly for this white house for the biden administration, this is a significant setback. i think the white house will argue that this will only prolong this pandemic. and it really challenges their ability to address what has been a real challenge
where people come inside for even a little bit. it seemed like, pete, some of the more conservative judges were sympathetic to the challengers. is that a good assessment? yes. there were two, one being the osha requirement, one where there s a company with more than 80 employees. the they re saying the government doesn t have the authority to do that for a couple of reasons. some of the justices thought it wasn t targeted, that it didn t make any distinction where people are spread out, or come in much and assembly workers are standing shoulder to shoulder. second, it s not a workplace thing. it s everywhere. how does osha get involved with the workplace. it s not just the workplace. the court seemed skeptical about that. now, the separate one, the
this has played out in court so far. the first one was imposed by osha, saying that any employer with at least a hundred workers has to mandate masks or testing. the states and the businesses that oppose it asked the supreme court to take the case. and in the meantime to shut it down again while the court considers it. so the court did agree to hear this. but it did not agree to shut it down. so the osha requirement is still in effect. and the court will hear this on an extremely fast schedule, agreeing to hear it on january 7th, a friday, when they weren t even scheduled to be in the courtroom. they weren t scheduled to come back until the following week. so it s very, very fast work here, almost unprecedented, to move this fast on a case. the second one involves anyone who treats medicare or medicaid patients, they are required to be vaccinated. the federal government said it was important to keep the health care workers from spreading the vaccine to vulnerable
here to stay. having covid in the environment here and in the world is probably here to stay. covid as we re dealing with it now is not here to stay. we re going to be able to control this. the new normal is not going to be what it is now, it s going to be better. let s begin with those arguments at the supreme court. joining me now is nbc news justice correspondent pete williams and university of baltimore law professor and author of how to read the constitution and why, kim whaley. pete, the arguments today lasted three hours and 40 minutes. what can we suss out from how the justices were asking questions? it s pretty clear that the majority of the court is going to rule that the obama administration cannot for now enforce this osha requirement. the issue before the court was not really the legality of it. it was a somewhat more technical question of whether the lower court orders that wanted to put a stop on it should be sustained, in other words whether the supreme court is g
workers in several states, teachers in new york, for example. but those involved a very different issue of state power to impose these kinds of public health measures. those are all reserved to the states by the constitution. the federal government has no standalone such powers known as police powers. so the question in these two cases is whether specific federal laws that govern osha and that govern hhs allow the government to do that. and as we hear, katy, the supreme court has reached a sort of split here, saying no on the osha requirement. so they re now blocked. and yes on the hhs mandate. and the hhs mandate was in effect in about half the country. it was blocked in the other half of the states. so now the government can continue to enforce it in the entire country. but osha is now stopped in its tracks. and one other note here, these cases were not about whether these mandates or these requirements were legal or constitutional. it was simply about whether they