Friday, January 7, 2022 the US Supreme Court heard oral argThe U.S. Supreme Court announced Wednesday it would consolidate the appeals cases regarding court-ordered stays placed on two of the current Administration’s vaccine mandates on January 7. ,

The consolidated cases include two sets of cases. The first is Biden v. Missouri and Becerra v. Louisiana, which concerns the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ vaccine mandate covering healthcare workers at certain facilities. The second is National Federation of Independent Business v. OSHA and Ohio v. OSHA, which concerns the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Emergency Temporary Standard for employers with 100 or more employees.

The two mandates have faced legal hurdles and multiple challenges from stakeholders over the last few months. A federal judge placed a nationwide injunction on the CMS mandate, but the scope of the injunction was later limited to specific states by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, a stay on OSHA’s ETS was recently lifted by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Hearing oral arguments is important to give the court the opportunity to ask questions while also retaining the emergency status of the application to consolidate.

The Federal Judiciary has a long standing policy not to allow cameras in hearings. The courts have allowed live streaming and audio recording of the oral arguments. The links to the audio files and the transcripts are available at:

Nat. Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Dept. of Labor
Docket Number: 21A244
Date Argued: 01/07/22

https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2021/21A244

and

Biden v. Missouri
Docket Number: 21A240
Date Argued: 01/07/22

https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2021/21A240

Many were shocked when multiple justices provided statistics about COVID hospitalizations that we vastly overstated.

According to multiple news outlets (and the best evidence available), the following 3 justices provided inaccurate information in their comments and questions:

Justice Kagan provided at the outset of the hearing “the best way” to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is “for people to get vaccinated,” and the “second best way” is to “wear masks.” The health experts agree that there is absolutely no evidence that the COVID shots prevent transmission including against the Omicron variant. In fact, the former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Scott Gotlieb provided last week: “Cloth masks aren’t going to provide a lot of protection. That’s the bottom line. This is an airborne illness. We now understand that, and a cloth mask is not going to protect you from a virus that spreads through airborne transmission. It could protect better through droplet transmission, something like the flu, but not something like this coronavirus.”

Justice Breyer exaggerated the number of individuals in the United States who tested positive by at least 100 fold. In a country of 330 million, the Justice claimed that 750 million people tested positive for COVID-19 the day before. More likely than not, he intended to say 750,000. He also commented that a mandate would bring the number of daily cases down to zero. This comment is not an evidence-based comment as adults who are fully vaccinated and boosted are testing positive for COVID-19 at similar rates as unvaccinated adults.

Justice Sotomayor commented that the omicron variant was just ad deadly as the delta variant. This statement contradicts the experts. She then went on to state that more than 100,000 children have been hospitalized by COVID-19, with “many” on ventilators. This statement is a gross exaggeration of the facts. Official data shows that just over 3,300 children are hospitalized with COVID – many for other reasons but who tested positive at the hospitalized.

None of these individuals have issued a statement correcting the transcript.

Justice Gorsuch mis-spoke during the hearing but issued a correction. His comment as heard was, “We have flu vaccines. The flu kills, I believe, hundreds of thousands of people every year.” and was corrected in the transcript to reflect his intended comments, ““The flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year” According to the CDC, between annually between 12,000 and 52,000 deaths are attributed to the flu.

Why Do These Uncorrected Factually Inaccurate Statements Matter? The transcript of a court hearing is incredibly important not just for the current events at question, but for the future. A century from now will anyone realize that these 3 justices made factually inaccurate comments? It also raises a second and equally concerning issue – and that is if the staff who prepared briefings and comments for the justices provided inaccurate information to the justices to influence their opinions. This is something that likely will come out in the weeks and months ahead.

As soon as the courts issue their ruling the ICA will update our information.

The ICA has updated our tracking of mandates by jurisdiction. That information is available at: https://www.chiropractic.org/covid/covid-mandates-global/