Federal judge blocks vaccine mandate for health care workers in 10 states
A judge ruled that CMS does not have authority to mandate the vaccine and that the mandate most likely is an overstep.
A federal judge on Monday issued an injunction to halt the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for health care workers in 10 states.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp in the Eastern District of Missouri wrote that Congress did not grant the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services authority to mandate the vaccine and that the mandate most likely is an overstep of the agency’s authority. “The nature and breadth of the CMS mandate requires clear authorization from Congress — and Congress has provided none,” he wrote in the opinion.
“The vast economic and political significance” of the mandate also warrants a preliminary injunction, he said. The CMS estimated that the first year of compliance would cost $1.38 billion and represents the “heavy hand of the federal government.”
Schelp also indicated that the mandate may lead to staffing shortages.
“The scale falls clearly in favor of health care facilities operating with some unvaccinated employees, staff, trainees, students, volunteers and contractors, rather than the swift, irremediable impact of requiring health care facilities to choose between two undesirable choices — providing substandard care or providing no health care at all,” he wrote.
The mandate for approximately 76,000 providers, covering 17 million health care workers across the country, requires all eligible staff to have received at least a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine by December 6 and to be fully vaccinated by January 4. The ruling will block the mandate in Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Hampshire, which filed the lawsuit.
CMS faces four challenges against the rule. More than half of states are now involved in one of the challenges, which all claim the mandate will exacerbate staffing shortages. A federal judge in Florida declined to block the rule in a separate suit.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said the ruling was a “huge victory for health care workers in Missouri and across the country, including rural hospitals who were facing near certain collapse due to this mandate.”
Legal observers have said the mandate is on firm footing because the Medicare agency has the right to govern the rules facilities must follow if they want funding. “We’re obviously going to abide by the law and fight any efforts in courts to prevent health-care facilities from protecting their workforces,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.
If the injunction is appealed, it would land in the Eighth Circuit,