Sorry OSHA, You Can’t UsurpThe Role of Congress

Any middle school student who paid attention in history class can tell you which branch of the government has the authority to make laws. The Occupational Safety And Health Administration (OSHA), however, seemed to have forgotten that this power rests solely with Congress when they attempted to enact vaccine mandate. 

Fortunately, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the National Federation of Independent Business v. Occupational Safety and Health Administration put a stop to the unconstitutional policy before it went into effect.

Last year, OSHA enacted a policy, spearheaded by President Biden, that mandated employers with more than 100 employees require their workers to receive Covid vaccines or be subject to weekly Covid tests—a policy that would have impacted roughly 84 million Americans. 

Even for those who support government-mandated vaccines, such a policy cannot legally come from OSHA. Laws must be passed by Congress, and, as of yet, they have declined to take action on the issue. 

Yet, OSHA, an agency filled with unelected bureaucrats, tried to usurp the legislature’s role. In doing so, it blatantly ignored the Constitutional guarantee of separation of powers.

To justify its mandate, OSHA tried to argue that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH) of 1970 gave them the authority to mandate workplace vaccines. 

To be sure, the OSH Act’s primary purpose was to ensure that employers created a safe workplace for their employees, protecting them from exposure to toxic chemicals, dangerous machines, or unsanitary conditions. If OSHA wants to mandate hard hats on a construction site or first aid kits in places of business, that most certainly falls under the OSH Act. But nowhere in the OSH Act does it give the agency the power to enact nationwide vaccine mandates for a majority of the workforce. And the Supreme Court reaffirmed that.

Our Founding Fathers took great care in making sure our government would not give way to tyrants. They instituted three branches of government with three distinct duties and created a system of checks and balances to ensure that each branch stayed in its lane, unable to grow more powerful than the other. Bearing this in mind, even if Congress agreed with OSHA’s vaccine mandate, the Constitution forbids it from delegating away its authority.

OSHA is far from the only agency that has tried to get away with hijacking the role of Congress. 

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel once infamously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Unfortunately, many in government took this advice to heart. 

Since Covid began spreading throughout the country, agencies have used the health crisis to institute rules they have no business instituting. 

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)enacted eviction moratoria that forbid landlords from evicting tenants while the country dealt with the fallout from the virus. Any landlord who failed to comply with the CDC’s policy was threatened with fines up to $200,000 and criminal prosecution, even be forced to serve time behind bars.

According to the CDC’s own website it exists to save lives and protect people from health threats. If you’re struggling to see how this mission allows the CDC to interfere in the private dealings of landlords and their tenants, you’re not alone. 

Not only is housing completely irrelevant to the CDC’s intended purpose, but it also isn’t allowed to enact policy. The Supreme Court agreed and voted to end the ban this summer. 

When the separation of powers is ignored it isn’t just a slap in the face to theConstitution, it also opens the door for agencies to continue stretching their powers as far as they can. 

If OSHA had been allowed to institute its mandate, there would have been nothing stopping it from using its power to protect worker safety to shut down an entire business during flu season, even going so far as to require employers to pay their employees while the business is not operating. This would place an undue economic burden on employers, just as the CDC’s eviction ban placed financial burdens on landlords. 

Unfortunately, these illegal power grabs at the hands of executive agencies happened long before Covid, and they will surely continue long after. We can only hope that the courts continue to make the right decision in upholding the separation of powers for which our Founders believed so passionately.