BREAKING UPDATE [3:05 p.m. EST, 1/13/22]: In a surprise move this afternoon, the Supreme Court of the United States has struck down the Biden Administration’s COVID vaccination mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees. Read our Sister Toldjah’s piece here.

If you were hoping for a swift decision from the Supreme Court on Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate, we now know that’s not going to happen. Despite the mandate going into effect earlier this week and the court being rumored to release a decision today, it is official: They have punted.

Unfortunately, despite the finality of the enforcement of the mandate on millions of Americans (you can’t de-vaccinate yourself), the court chose to release only one decision today. Here’s what it was.

And we have our one SCOTUS opinion of the day.

Held: Civil-service pension payments based on employment as a dual-status military technician are not payments based on “service as a member of a uniformed service” under 42 U. S. C. §415(a)(7)(A)(III). https://t.co/3ZlxXtlDvw

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 13, 2022

Clearly, a case on civil-service pensions needed to be decided post-haste. But when it comes to forcing irreversible vaccinations on private employees despite the fact that vaccines don’t stop the spread of the virus, SCOTUS has all the time in the world. It’s completely inexplicable.

As RedState reported, Justice Sonia Sotomayor thoroughly beclowned herself during oral arguments and the rest of the far-left liberals weren’t much better. In the end, there were clear questions about the statutory authority (or lack thereof) for OSHA to mandate vaccines for private businesses. That’s especially true given the overwhelming evidence that everyone spreads COVID. OSHA is not supposed to be able to put in place provisions that are proven non-effective.

The conservative justices also questioned the distinction in police power between the federal government and the states. Justice Neil Gorsuch further pressed the lack of any limiting principle in the OSHA mandate. What’s the line? Can they mandate flu vaccines? Why haven’t they then? Is there a number of deaths that somehow cancels out the constitution, as the liberal justices seemed to be arguing?

Yet, with all those realities working against Biden’s mandate, the court punted anyway. Thursdays are usually the day decisions are released so, at the very least, Americans have to suffer under the mandate another week. That means no relief for those who haven’t complied to this point and are now unable to work. Conceivably, some kind of emergency relief could be provided on any day from the court, but that seems implausible now that they’ve let it linger this long.

No doubt, some of the conservatives were ready to strike this federal infringement, and you can probably guess the ones who needed more time. With that said, if the court comes back with a far-reaching decision that doesn’t just strike the mandate down but also neuters the administrative state, something several of the justices have wanted to do for a long time, then perhaps they can be forgiven for this initial punt. We’ll see what happens, but in the meantime, Americans are getting kicked in the teeth.