MSNBC's Joy Reid launched a scathing attack on the Supreme Court justices who voted to block one of President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.
Reid accused the conservative judges of caring more about "right-wing politics" than keeping people alive after they voted down the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) mandate requiring businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure all staff are vaccinated against COVID or have weekly tests.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 against the mandate on Thursday, which was due to begin on Friday. The six judges who voted against the proposed plans were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas.
Speaking about Thursday's decision on her show that evening, Reid said that Biden's administration had stated the mandate would result in 22 million people getting vaccinated and prevent 250,000 COVID hospitalizations.
Reid then asked one of her guests, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States Neal Katyal, whether the six judges who voted against the mandate have shown they are "more in favor of right-wing politics" shown by people such as Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis than they are "in favor of saving lives."
She said: "They don't really care if this causes less people to die, clearly."
In response, Katyal described the decision "as a dark day for the court and for the country."
"It's such a grave threat to public safety. And the idea that the Supreme Court is responsible for it. It's really hard to imagine," Katyal said. "The court had a legal fiction to get around it, they said it's not an 'occupational hazard,' because you could get COVID at work or you could get it at school or a baseball game.
"Well, by that logic, then OSHA shouldn't regulate fire prevention plans because you could forget to turn off the oven or your kids could be playing with matches. I mean, it is ludicrous."
Reid also said the Supreme Court judges who voted against the mandates are more suited to host right-wing media shows than deciding on the laws of the country.
"It is hard to think of them as anything other than right-wing ideologues, they should all just have right-wing talk radio shows," Reid said.
"They are not justices in the great tradition of Supreme Court justices, they're just politicians. I see nothing about what they're doing that I can possibly respect. It's sad what was happening in this country."
The Supreme Court has been contacted for comment.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
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