Vaccine mandates under fire

Vaccine mandates across the country continue to be challenged as states continue to file lawsuits against the Biden administration and OSHA. Most recently two lawsuits against the mandate were successful and stays upheld.

Governor Greg Abbott responded with,” A Federal Judge has blocked the Medicare & Medicaid Agencies from enforcing a vaccine mandate against millions of healthcare workers. The judge wrote that mandating a vaccine is not something that should be done a government agency.”

Texas filed a lawsuit in October against the mandates, along with 11 other states. Texas’ latest legal challenge targeting federal vaccination mandates, Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration over its recent order requiring health workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Biden administration issued an emergency order, which went into effect Nov. 4, requiring eligible workers at health care facilities participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs to get the first shot of a two-dose vaccine or a one-dose vaccine by Dec. 6. Paxton called the mandate “an unprecedented federal vaccine decree” on health care workers.

“At a time when we need healthcare workers more than ever before, amid a harrowing worker shortage, the Biden administration has prioritized this unlawful vaccine mandate over the healthcare of all Americans,” Paxton said in a statement. “We need healthcare workers, regardless of their vaccination status, and this decision puts us on track for an impending disaster within the healthcare industry.”

But U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp on Monday struck the first blow on the health care mandate when he blocked President Biden's administration from enforcing a coronavirus vaccine mandate on thousands of health care workers in 10 states that brought the first legal challenge against the requirement.

The preliminary injunction by St. Louis-based U.S. District Court judge applies to a coalition of suing states that includes Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Similar lawsuits also are pending in other states.

The court order stated that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid had no clear authority from Congress to enact the vaccine mandate for providers participating in the two government health care programs for the elderly, disabled and poor.

The federal rule requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million workers nationwide in about 76,000 health care facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. Workers were to receive their first dose by Dec. 6 and their second shot by Jan. 4.

Biden's administration contends federal rules supersede state policies prohibiting vaccine mandates and are essential to slowing the pandemic. But the judge in the health care provider case wrote that federal officials likely overstepped their legal powers.

"CMS seeks to overtake an area of traditional state authority by imposing an unprecedented demand to federally dictate the private medical decisions of millions of Americans. Such action challenges traditional notions of federalism," Schelp wrote in his order. "Congress did not clearly authorize CMS to enact the this politically and economically vast, federalism-altering, and boundary pushing mandate."

The court order against the health care vaccine mandate comes after Biden's administration suffered a similar setback for a broader policy, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit fully blocked Biden’s executive order requiring companies with over 100 workers to mandate vaccination for their employees after temporarily staying it on Nov. 12. The court ordered that OSHA “take no steps to implement or enforce” the vaccine mandate “until further court order.”

Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt wrote that the stay “is firmly in the public interest. From economic uncertainty to workplace strife, the mere specter of the mandate has contributed to untold economic upheaval in recent months.”

On Nov. 18, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) suspended implementation and enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers after a federal court blocked the measure.