Matt Bush, FISM News
A federal appeals court in New Orleans reversed a lower court’s decision to block the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in 26 states. The ruling requires all healthcare workers to be vaccinated if they work in a federally funded facility.
The Biden administration mandate requires “that healthcare facilities get staff vaccinated against the coronavirus or lose funding from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers the two large government healthcare programs.”
According to a CNBC article, “The mandate remains temporarily blocked in 24 states — the 14 states involved in the case reviewed by the New Orleans appeals court and 10 states where the mandate was blocked by a separate Nov. 29 ruling.”
The 14 states that sued are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. The 10 states where the mandate was blocked on November 29 are Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Hampshire.
This is a rare win for the Biden administration, but it was largely a procedural win rather than one based on the merits of the case. The appeals court reversed the vaccine mandate block nationwide, while maintaining the decision for any state involved in the suit. In short, the judges did not endorse the vaccine mandate, they just said the judge did not have the authority to block it nationwide.
The healthcare mandate initially required more than 2 million unvaccinated healthcare workers to receive the vaccine by December 6, and for the 26 states not listed above that mandate is back in place. There are no statistics yet to say how many people this will affect, but it will be significant.
The Biden administration argued that the mandate could save thousands of lives every month and is especially important with the onset of omicron and the start of winter. Proponents of mandates like this one believe they are necessary to put an end to the pandemic.
Opponents of the mandate argue that the requirement could lead to staff shortages and that it constitutes government overreach into the private lives of individuals. They also point to data suggesting that vaccinated individuals get and spread the virus just like unvaccinated people do.
While it is a win for the Biden administration, it is a tentative one. There are three far-reaching vaccine requirements that have been set by the Biden administration, and each one has struggled to find popular support. The healthcare worker mandate seems to fly in the face of people who have spent the past two years on the front lines fighting COVID and as such has taken more of the spotlight.
The OSHA mandate for businesses with over 100 employees and the mandate for federal employees and contractors are also both highly controversial. As the leader of the federal government, Biden’s mandate for federal employees will continue to be enforced, but OSHA’s mandate is being challenged in the courts at the time of this writing.