Alabama, 15 other States in U.S challenge vaccine mandates for health workers

Attorneys general from 16 states, led by Louisiana, filed a new legal challenge to COVID-19 vaccine mandates for U.S. healthcare workers claiming the mandates are illegal and obsolete, as the vaccines don’t work against Omicron, the dominant variant in the U.S.

The amended lawsuit was filed Feb. 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Chiquita Brooks-Lasure, administrator of CMS.

The suit seeks to block the mandate for healthcare workers in the 25 states that previously challenged it and where it is set to take effect beginning this month.

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The revised lawsuit puts forth a series of new arguments, including that the CMS mandate was designed in response to the Delta variant and is therefore now obsolete.

Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia joined Louisiana in the lawsuit.

The amended lawsuit comes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Jan. 13 decision, which lifted injunctions that had been in effect in 25 states. The Supreme Court said mandates could go into effect while lawsuits challenging it continue to weave their way through the judicial system.

This decision came following a circuitous legal process, where U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty initially blocked the mandate nationwide, on Nov. 30, 2021. (Judge Doughty is overseeing the case involving the amended lawsuit.)

An appeals court later lifted the injunction in 26 states on Dec. 15, 2021, but the mandate was then separately blocked in Texas that same day by another judge.

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These developments prompted the Biden administration in late December 2021 to file an emergency request with the Supreme Court, asking the court to lift the various injunctions barring implementation of the CMS mandate.

The mandate, as originally issued by the CMS, specifically applies to healthcare workers at hospitals and facilities that receive federal funding — namely, those that accept Medicare and Medicaid payments.

“The CMS vaccination rule remains a misguided, one-size-fits-all, job-killing directive that does not account for any change in circumstances — including how the vaccines do not stop the transmission of the Omicron variant.

“By forcing healthcare workers to choose between their jobs or an experimental vaccine they do not want, CMS is affirmatively pinching an already strained workforce — and particularly so in rural areas within the States.”

The lawsuit also notes the shifting and contradictory position of the federal government, which, for instance, recently issued guidance permitting healthcare workers who have tested positive for COVID to go to work, which undercuts the policy that prohibits unvaccinated healthcare workers from going to work even with a negative test result.