In the Washington Post, Jeff Stein suggests that:
Compounding liberal disillusionment is conservatives’ grip on the Supreme Court, which acts as a backstop against left policy change even if the obstacles to legislation are eventually overcome. The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s vaccination-or-testing requirement for the country’s biggest firms, a devastating blow to the White House’s efforts to fight covid.
Notice the jump here? Stein laments “the obstacles to legislation,” but then uses as an example “the Biden administration’s vaccination-or-testing requirement,” which was not legislation, and was struck down precisely because it was not legislation, and because it could not be reconciled with any legislation that actually exists.
At NPR, Nina Totenberg does pretty much the same thing:
Some of it is traceable to the new conservative supermajority, including three Trump appointees, a court that may well end up more conservative than any since the 1930s. It’s a majority that has evidenced less and less respect for precedent, or the notion of deference to Congress in setting policy.
Again, the Court’s recent actions have not displayed a lack of “deference to Congress in setting policy,” but an abundance of deference. By contrast, the Court is exhibiting a lack of deference to the executive branch, which is why Joe Biden’s illegal OSHA mandate and illegal national eviction moratorium were both struck down on the grounds that they lacked statutory authority.
Why have successive American presidents acted as if there is no difference between executive action and congressional legislation? Perhaps, in part, because the press backs them up when they do.