Federal Judge Blocks Biden Healthcare Worker Vaccine Mandate

A federal judge in the Eastern District of Missouri has blocked the federal vaccine mandate contained in the medicare and medicaid rules for healthcare workers.  [pdf ruling available here] Previously the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMMS) issued a regulation requiring healthcare workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to get vaccinated. This ruling is even more influential, as the workers protected in the ten states are specifically inside the healthcare industry.

(Business Insider) […] Judge Matthew Schelp of the Eastern District of Missouri issued the preliminary injunction for workers at Medicare- and Medicaid-certified medical facilities in Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota, court documents said.

The 10 states had sued the Biden administration, saying the vaccine mandate was unconstitutional.

Schelp — whom President Donald Trump nominated to the bench in 2019 — said the public would benefit from the ruling “because it would ensure that federal agencies do not extend their power beyond the express delegation from Congress.”  […] The Medicare and Medicaid regulation is what Monday’s ruling was about. The agency has said that rule affects 17 million workers at 76,000 healthcare facilities nationwide. (read more)

Hopefully the judicial commonsense becomes, well, more common.