Former Obama official blasts Supreme Court justices for blocking Biden's vaccine mandate: 'They really don't want to stop this pandemic'

• An ex-Obama official blasted the Supreme Court for blocking a vaccine mandate for big companies.
• "They really don't want to stop this pandemic," David Michaels said on MSNBC on Sunday.

A former Obama administration official blasted Supreme Court justices on Sunday for blocking President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large companies.

"They really don't want to stop this pandemic," David Michaels, an epidemiologist who worked as an assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 through January 2017 after being nominated for the role by then-President Barack Obama, said on MSNBC on Sunday.

Michaels said he believes that Republican-appointed judges on the Supreme Court "don't care" about the coronavirus crisis.

"We're not going to stop this pandemic, and we're not going to get people back to work and the country back to normalcy if we don't have some much better workplace protections," he said.

The Supreme Court last week struck down Biden's vaccine-or-test mandate for private companies with more than 100 employees, but allowed the mandate to take shape for healthcare workers at federally funded facilities.

The 6-3 ruling was a victory to Republicans who argued that the mandate was an overreach of power for the federal government.