An earlier version of this article erroneously quoted Justice Gorsuch saying the flu kills “hundreds of thousands of people every year.” The title and text have been changed for accuracy.
Conservative justices on the Supreme Court are making it clear they oppose President Joe Biden’s vaccinate or test workplace mandate. Arguments against the OSHA-enforced directive from attorneys arguing the case on the right are being derided on social media, but now the justices themselves are making embarrassing excuses to kill the life-saving federal order.
Take Justice Neil Gorsuch, a 54-year old father of two with a Harvard Law degree and a PhD from Oxford.
He has zero medical training. (It also appears he’s an anti-masker, see below.)
The Trump appointed jurist on Thursday handed down medical “information” to support the clear desire of the far right court to end the mandate.
During oral arguments, made by two right wing attorneys remotely because both have COVID, Gorsuch compared the deadly coronavirus which has killed over 850,000 Americans, to the seasonal flu.
Justice Gorsuch told the Court the flu kills “hundreds, thousands of people every year.”
According to the CDC, the flu kills 12,000 to 52,000 annually. COVID-19 to date has killed over 850,000 in the U.S., including 385,000 in 2020.
It’s clear Gorsuch does not understand how highly transmissible the coronavirus is, nor how deadly it is – not to even begin to mention long COVID, or that millions of Americans are ineligible for age or health reasons to get vaccinated against COVID.
Social media users erupted in anger and frustration.
The Economist’s Supreme Court reporter Steven Mazie reveals Justice Goursuch actually laughed when the U.S. Solicitor General called the coronavirus pandemic “terrible.”
Unsurprisingly, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern points out, Gorsuch was the only justice at the Court unmasked.
Image: LBJ Library photo by Jay Godwin