A federal judge blocked the federal government on Monday from mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for health care workers in South Dakota and nine other states.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp in the Eastern District of Missouri wrote in his ruling that regulations handed down by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services earlier this month were issued improperly.
The Judge wrote in his ruling that they did not get approval from Congress to make the ruling of such “vast economic and political significance.” The Judge also ruled there was no standard period for public comment.
“Truly, the impact of this mandate reaches far beyond COVID,” Schelp wrote. “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.”
He called the mandate “arbitrary and capricious,” arguing that CMS “lacks evidence showing that vaccination status has a direct impact on spreading COVID” in the covered health care facilities; the agency has primarily pointed to data from long-term care facilities in its defense.
“No one questions that protecting patients and health care workers from contracting COVID is a laudable objective,” he wrote. “But the court cannot, in good faith, allow CMS to enact an unprecedented mandate that lacks a ‘rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.'”
Independent health care providers can still require workers to get vaccinated.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is running for the Senate, led the lawsuit, alongside Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire.
Schmitt said rural hospitals “were facing near-certain collapse due to this mandate.”
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These last 3 rulings against mandates all took hard positions and left no room for higher courts to overrule. They state the mandate is clearly unConstitutional and the numbers do not justify action. So, law, legal theory and practice nullify the mandate. I think this shows the intent to box in the higher courts against their frequent irrational rulings. This is a fight within the judicial branch. Higher courts will need to go rogue, and ignore the substance of the rulings, to overrule.
All it takes is a cheap judge like Roberts to make the mandates legal.
Why oh why hasn’t Ken Paxton ( Atty Gen) joined in this suit to protect Texans. I just spoke today with a friend (a healthcare worker) that will be fired January 4th if he does not get vaccinated. He is way to smart and informed to take the poisonous jab
The self appointed “enemy of the people”…the corrupt MSM.. insist on your compliance…