The Supreme Court released an amended version of its Saturday oral argument transcripts in order to correct an error involving a question asked by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.
During oral arguments against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for companies employing more than 100 individuals, Gorsuch asked why the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) does not mandate vaccines for other illnesses, such as the flu.
“We have flu vaccines. The flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year. OSHA has never purported to regulate on that basis,” the justice noted.
However, an initial transcript of the oral arguments claimed that Gorsuch asserted that “hundreds of thousands of people” die of the flu every year, causing left-wing publications and commentators to accuse the justice of promoting COVID-19 misinformation. The edited transcript was first reported on by The Hill.
From 2010-2020, between 12,000 and 61,000 people died of the flu every year, according to estimates from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Here’s the audio from the hearing. I clipped it to the exact statement. You can find the full audio here (the exact quote is at -16:06): https://t.co/Kt5KAFE6iz
In it, Gorsuch clearly says “hundreds of thousands”. pic.twitter.com/yB7qxZSWs3
— Charlotte Clymer 🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) January 8, 2022
Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch misspoke stating Flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year: ❌ FALSE
✅ FACT: Flu kills on average between 20-60k Americans each year. COVID has resulted in over 850K deaths so far.
@PolitiFact pls fact check pic.twitter.com/5g1t1Ed78B
— Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (@DebbieforFL) January 8, 2022
Gorsuch: “the flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year”
NO IT DOES NOT. STOP GETTING YOUR MEDICAL STATS FROM FOX NEWS.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) January 7, 2022
Several media outlets, including The Guardian, Newsweek, and Esquire, also printed the false quotation, despite the fact that an immediately available audio recording of the questioning revealed Gorsuch’s true remarks.
During the Court’s Friday hearings, Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer repeated false COVID-19 statistics. Sotomayor asserted that more than 100,000 children are “in serious condition,” with “many on ventilators,” despite the fact that fewer than 83,000 children have been hospitalized with the virus throughout the entire pandemic. Breyer added that the U.S. experienced 750 million new COVID-19 cases in a day, despite the fact that the U.S. population is around 350 million. (RELATED: ‘Smells Of Politics’: Louisiana AG Jeff Landry Sounds Off On Supreme Court Vaccine Arguments)
A spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on the transcript approval and revision process.