Americans are divided on the Supreme Court's split decision on vaccine mandates, blocking them on private businesses and permitting them on government-funded healthcare facilities, but ultimately Congress has the say and not the executive or judicial branches, according to legal expert Alan Dershowitz on Newsmax.
"I think I'm one of the few Americans who is happy with both decisions," Dershowitz told Saturday's "America Right Now." "I think the decision about the workplace mandate was right. You need Congress to pass such an overarching mandate that requires nearly 100 million people to be vaccinated, and I do think that the government has the right to condition receiving payments to hospitals on assuring the safety of patients and doctors."
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted moderate Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh for not having "the backbone" to block President Joe Biden's mandating vaccines for healthcare workers for facilities that receive federal funding – which Dershowitz has noted is effectively all U.S. healthcare providers.
"Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh, who made the difference between the two decisions, I think as a matter of law, probably got it right," Dershowitz told host Tom Basile.
Dershowitz predicted the Supreme Court's decision to reject the vaccine mandate the Biden administration attempted to enforce through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in his book, "The Case for Vaccine Mandates."
"A mandate would probably be upheld by the Supreme Court if it were passed by Congress –if it had exceptions, it was based on the current science," Dershowitz added. "But we don't have the moment."
Dershowitz also noted the New York state attempts to prioritize COVID-19 treatments based on race is "so clearly unconstitutional."
"It is clearly unconstitutional to base any medical benefits on race," Dershowitz said. "You can base it on poverty. You can base it on access to medicine. You can based it on prior conditions, but you can't say that an African American billionaire who was the CEO of a company and who has his own private doctor gets benefit over a poor working-class white person from a poor neighborhood.
"That is so clearly unconstitutional. You cannot use race as a criteria except in extraordinary circumstances – and even those have been challenged lately, but this one is clearly unconstitutional."
Finally, Dershowitz also lamented conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talking about an impeachment of Biden – who Dershowitz said he had voted for over former President Donald Trump, a man he defended in the first Senate impeachment trial in 2020.
"The Constitution provides only treason – it's not treason, it's not bribery, and it's not other crimes, or the high crimes and misdemeanors," Dershowitz said. "What Ted is doing – you know, he's a former student of mine; I like him very much – he's saying, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. It doesn't pass the shoe on the other foot test. 'You guys on the Democratic side impeached our president; we're going to impeach your president.'
"But two constitutional wrongs do not make a right, and I don't think president Biden – who I voted for, but if he committed an impeachable offense, I'd favor his impeachment. The same thing would be true with any president.
"I don't think President Biden at this point has committed an impeachable offense, and I think we shouldn't weaponized impeachment on either side.
"Two constitutional wrongs do not make a constitutional right."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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