This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 13th,

2022. I'm Cablet Brown.

The Supreme Court has now heard the challenge

to the President's Vax or test mandate through OSHA.

Cato's Ilya Shapiro argues that while a state-level mandate might well pass constitutional

muster, this broad federal mandate probably won't withstand court scrutiny. I had said initially when I heard that the Biden administration was moving ahead with this mandate that it seems like a case of the president imposing a mandate,

understanding that it's not going anywhere,

but the big victory that he was going to get out of it

was signaling to someone that he cares.

So what do we know now that this case has gone

before the US Supreme Court and what are your expectations?

Well, I think it was more than signaling that he cares.

It was what lawyers referred to as an interorum effect that is terrorizing, although that's a little bit

strong, encouraging people to get vaccinated, even if ultimately the mandate is blocked, which I think is the most likely outcome after the Supreme Court argument.

Very similar dynamic to what we saw with the CDC's eviction moratorium,

where I think a majority of the justices are going to say that,

look, you can't hang this awesome power of potentially

affecting a hundred million Americans or more to get them vaccinated on some very

vague language in a broad old statute.

And so even without getting into deeper philosophical,

constitutional debates about the scope of federal power

and all of that, just based on the OSHA statute I think

...