Appeals Court Allows Healthcare Vaccine Mandate in 26 States

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has allowed CMS to enforce the vaccine mandate specific to healthcare workers to resume in about half of the country. Although, the decision released on Wednesday evening upholds a previous court’s preliminary injunction of the mandate in 14 states, including Louisiana where the previous court resides.

The United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana only had the authority to temporarily halt enforcement of the Biden Administration’s healthcare-specific vaccine mandate in the 14 states that sued the federal government, according to the appeals court’s decision. The court ruled that the lower court was wrong to order a nationwide injunction.

The healthcare-specific vaccine mandate requires all employees in Medicare or Medicaid-certified facilities to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by Jan. 4, 2022, or lose federal funding per updated Conditions of Participation.

CMS suspended enforcement of the vaccine mandate earlier this month following the Louisiana court’s decision, as well as a similar ruling from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Several major hospitals and health systems also paused enforcement of their facility-specific vaccine mandates for workers in light of the court decisions.

With the appeals court’s order, CMS will be able to resume the vaccine mandate in all states besides the ones listed as plaintiffs. Those states include Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.

 In addition, the ten states from the Missouri case also do not need to comply with the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. Those are Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire.

CMS has not yet said whether it will resume the healthcare vaccine mandate in most of the country.

The decision is yet another win for the Biden Administration. Just this week, the Supreme Court refused to block New York’s requirement that healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 even if they have religious objections, according to The New York Times. The Court has now let vaccine mandates stand in Indiana, Maine, and New York.

Pertaining to the CMS vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, “the federal government will likely ask the [US]. Supreme Court to stay the narrowed injunction upheld by the Fifth Circuit at the same time it asks the Supreme Court to stay the 10-state injunction upheld by the Eighth Circuit,” said Sean Marotta, a partner at Hogan Lovells and outside counsel at the American Hospital Association (AHA), in a blog post yesterday.

Marotta also reported in the blog post today that the Texas district has resumed the state’s challenge of the healthcare vaccine mandate and entered a preliminary injunction stopping CMS enforcement in the state. Florida has also filed for a “rehearing en banc” of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s decision enjoining the healthcare vaccine mandate pending appeal. The motion asks the full court to overall the court’s order denying Florida an injunction.

Most healthcare workers are already fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. But some organizations are still hesitant to implement their own vaccine mandates because of significant labor shortages affecting their abilities to deliver optimal care.