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Supreme Court REJECTS Biden Administration’s Vaccine Mandate Challenge to Health Workers in Facilities Receiving Federal Funding
- Federal health worker rule requires vaccination for about 10.3 million workers in 76,000 healthcare facilities
- It affects hospitals and nursing homes that take Medicare and Medicaid funds
- Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in January to let care mandate stand as trial progressed
- That earlier ruling recognized other vaccine mandates for health professionals
- Mostly, the Republican states argued that it caused a shortage of workers
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The Supreme Court granted a vaccine mandate to health professionals Monday when it refused to file a case brought by Missouri and mostly Republican-led states.
The decision not to appeal was a victory for the Biden administration, which in January saw the conservative court take down its vaccine people who worked at major companies to get vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus.
The efforts were both key pillars of the government’s efforts to boost vaccination in an effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
It came on the Supreme Court’s first day back in session, when Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the outvoted liberal minority on the 6-3 Conservative court.
Biden government’s vaccine mandate for health workers stands after Supreme Court (pictured in January) refused to appeal
The judges dismissed an appeal from Missouri and nine other states after a lower court immediately refused to consider their claims that the vaccine rule violates federal administrative law and tramples on the powers reserved to states under the U.S. Constitution .
The government imposed the rule in November 2021 when COVID-19 was raging, but it immediately faced backlash from people who said the president was exceeding his authority.
The Supreme Court ruled in January in a 5-4 decision to let Biden enforce the health worker’s mandate, while lawsuits over its legal grounds continued in lower courts. The judges simultaneously voted 6-3 to end his government’s rule requiring vaccines or weekly COVID-19 testing for employees at companies with at least 100 employees.
Citing the purpose of Medicare and Medicaid, the majority wrote in January, “One of those functions—perhaps the most basic, given the Department’s core mission—is to ensure that the health care providers who care for Medicare and Medicaid patients , protecting their patients’ health and safety.’
The decision came into court on day one, with new judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
The Biden administration has imposed a health mandate on hospital and nursing home workers whose institutions accept Medicare and Medicaid funding
The mandate drew political resistance and 10 Republican-led states filed a lawsuit
This artist sketch shows attorney Scott Keller arguing on behalf of more than two dozen business groups for an immediate Supreme Court order to overturn an order by the Biden administration to give the country’s major employers a vaccine during the COVID-19 crisis. – or impose test requirement. -19 pandemic, at the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, January 7, 2022. The court removed the mandate for large companies, but left one for health professionals
The Secretary of Health and Human Services “routinely sets terms for participation that relate to the qualifications and duties of health professionals themselves,” the majority wrote. It also noted that “vaccination requirements are a common feature of health care in America.”
The Biden administration had argued that the two mandates would save lives and strengthen the U.S. economy by increasing the number of Americans vaccinated. The United States leads the world in COVID-19 deaths, reporting more than a million since the pandemic took hold in the early months of 2020.
The federal health worker rule requires vaccination for about 10.3 million workers in 76,000 healthcare facilities, including hospitals and nursing homes that accept money from the government’s Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs for the elderly, the disabled and low-income Americans.
The Supreme Court ruled in January that Biden’s ordinance was within the power Congress granted the federal government to impose conditions on Medicaid and Medicare funds. It concluded that ensuring that healthcare providers take steps to prevent a dangerous virus from being passed on to their patients is consistent with the “fundamental principle of the medical profession: First, do no harm.”
Missouri, along with Nebraska, Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, filed a lawsuit and won an injunction against the requirement in those states.
The mandate was also blocked in 15 other states, including Arizona and Texas, after lawsuits there.
After judges in January postponed lower courts’ injunctions against the rule, including in the Missouri lawsuit, the state asked the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis to expedite the case.
In April, the 8th Circuit sent the case back to a federal judge to continue with a trial. Missouri then appealed to the Supreme Court, alleging that the mandate violates federal administrative law and the powers reserved to states under the Constitution.
The conservative states had argued that the mandate was “devastating” small, rural and community-based health care facilities and systems across the states.