The Inhumanity of the U.S. Supreme Court
Why Not Ignore the Court; You Will Feel Much Better
There is a song by the group TV On the Radio called “Happy Idiot” that explains the uselessness of the U.S. Supreme Court today.
The song is about a guy recovering from a love relationship by being ignorant. “Ignorance is bliss,” the song says at one point.
And eventually, the despondent crooner sings of banging his head on the wall until he feels nothing to keep his mind off of the person.
There is no reason to bang your head on a wall but do ignore the U.S. Supreme Court. The place is not worth the internal struggle. It is not a court anymore. I call its opinions “prehistoric” or “medieval” judicial conduct. It is like something out of the 19th century but mostly it is ideological desperation.
The latest is their decision to basically kill President Biden’s vaccine mandate via the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
The mandate would require private businesses with more than 100 employees to vaccinate their workers. There are some exceptions such as getting a negative test. It is not that much of a burden. Vaccinate so the workplace can be safe. If the workplace is safe, communities will be safer.
The OSHA directive was designed to try to get more people vaccinated and stop this disease called Covid-19, a disease that has claimed over 800,000 American lives at least. The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative ideologues killed the mandate. They stood with the anti-vaxxers and hid behind their strange interpretation of the law.
As another variant of the disease spreads wildly in every state in the U.S., they took a nonchalant view, an out-of-touch view, and said the danger of being exposed to the virus in the workplace, is not a workplace hazard.
It’s idiotic judicial analysis.
Yes, not only idiotic, but it’s politics. Nothing about the decision remotely makes sense in the law. It’s just spin.
The view of the Court is Congress should act and change the law. But Congress is more dysfunctional than the U.S. Supreme Court. That branch of the U.S. government is deceased. And Congress acted when it passed the OSHA law. A highly infectious virus is a workplace hazard.
Here is a piece of the opinion that is especially dumfounding.
Although COVID– 19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases.
Reading that excerpt you get the impression the justices who voted for this are completely cut off from the world. They have no idea what is going on in the lives of people. They actually wrote — “everywhere else that people gather.” That would be most jobs in the world.
But this Court, by nature, does not interact with the common man and woman. They do not interact with everyday workers. They do not interact with anything or anyone it seems.
They have no idea what it is like to work in a close working environment and not know who has gotten the shot and who has gotten their shot. It is a decision of privilege and politics. The justices who voted for this are all pro-business and they will side with business every time.
But mostly, they don’t give a damn. There is no chance anyone in their family works at a food outlet, a grocery store, or any number of businesses where a simple vaccine requirement would slow the virus in its tracks.
We also have a new fast-spreading variant now — Omicron, which is very contagious. We do not know if it will one day mutate into something very contagious and very aggressive in making people sick. So far, we don’t know though we do know that three shots provide good protection.
If we get another variant that is contagious and deadly, will they still conclude that there is no workplace hazard?
I doubt anything can move these justices. They are lost in their ideology and not the law. Their ideology is inhumane. They have issued opinions rooted in social Darwinism before, this feels like more of the same.
Someone coming to work with a potentially deadly virus is a workplace hazard for all of the other workers. Someone coming down with Covid-19 could die. This is not like inhaling smoke in the workplace or getting burned on a stove.
If they don’t think so, ask California migrant workers who caught Covid-19 how dangerous the workplace is, as explained in this documentary:
Here is the dissent in the case which proves the Court’s majority is morally bankrupt and has no credibility at all as judicial officers:
“In other words, the majority does not contest that COVID–19 is a “new hazard” and “physically harmful agent”; that it poses a “grave danger” to employees; or that a testing and masking or vaccination policy is “necessary” to prevent those harms. Instead, the majority claims that the Act does not “plainly authorize[ ]” the Standard because it gives OSHA the power to “set workplace safety stand- ards” and COVID–19 exists both inside and outside the workplace. Ante, at 6. In other words, the Court argues that OSHA cannot keep workplaces safe from COVID–19 because the agency (as it readily acknowledges) has no power to address the disease outside the work setting.” (Sotomayor)
So, for now, I am a “Happy Idiot.” I won’t pay attention to this Court (I really don’t except for my teaching).
I don’t respect this Supreme Court or acknowledge it. I didn’t acknowledge it much before the conservatives and the Federalist Society decided to stack it with political ideologues. When this majority gets old and dies off, and the Court becomes a judicial body again, these terrible decisions it renders year by year, perhaps can be fixed.
Until then, just play this song when you hear news about the U.S. Supreme Court — “Happy Idiot” (TV On the Radio).