Supreme Court wipes rulings on federal employee, military vaccine mandates

The Supreme Court wiped a series of rulings implicating the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates for federal employees and military service members, preventing the decisions from holding the weight of precedent in the future.

With the mandates rescinded, the justices sided with the Biden administration Monday in agreeing to set aside the lower rulings after deeming the disputes moot, thus providing a clean legal slate for any future vaccine mandates.

Courts had come to conflicting conclusions in the cases, but before the Supreme Court could weigh in on any of the appeals, the vaccine requirements were canceled. At issue before the justices was what legal remedy was appropriate given the developments. . . .

. . . . In the military vaccine mandate case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit issued an injunction preventing the Air Force from enforcing the requirement against religious objectors.

Weeks later, Congress passed legislation directing Biden’s defense secretary to rescind the mandate before the Supreme Court could consider any appeal.

In all three disputes, the administration urged the justices to issue what is known as a Munsingwear vacatur, which sets aside a lower ruling in certain instances of mootness.

The Navy employee who lost in the lower court agreed, while the victorious plaintiffs in the other federal employee case and the military vaccine case urged the Supreme Court to let their rulings stand.

Those plaintiffs argued that Munsingwear wasn’t applicable because the Biden administration had voluntarily mooted its own case. One group noted that other pandemic-era measures were dismantled months earlier, while the vaccine mandate remained in effect.

“Petitioners ask this Court to endorse a ‘heads we win, tails you get vacated’ version of Munsingwear, where they can litigate to the hilt in both district and circuit court and—only if they lose—then decline to seek substantive review from this Court and instead moot the case and ask this Court to erase the circuit court loss from the books,” those plaintiffs’ attorney wrote to the justices. . . .  (read more on The Hill)