Fifth Circuit overturns nationwide injunction on vaccine mandate for health care workers | Courthouse News Service

A lower court’s nationwide injunction improperly overturned a federal vaccine mandate in states that had not sued to challenge the measure. Courthouse News Service.

"Overturn" is an overstatement.  Limited geographically is more accurate.  A nationwide U.S. District Court injunction 2021 WL 5609846 blocked the Department of Health and Human Services Interim Final Rule. 86 Fed. Reg. 61555-01. Issued November 5, 2021 the Rule obligates a wide range of Medicare and Medicaid providers and suppliers to receive two doses of covid vaccine by January 4, 2022.  Citing the catastrophic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic - which today reached 800,000 deaths in the U.S. - the DHHS relied on the good cause exception to the Administrative Procedure Act 5 U.S.C. 553.

But the enormity and complexity of the pandemic was not enough to persuade the the District Judge  that an exception to the ordinary Notice and Comment requirement should be allowed.  He further relied on a precedential Fifth Circuit decision in BST Holdings which blocked a similar OSHA vaccine mandate for large employers, labeling it a "one size fits all sledge-hammer". Today a Fifth Circuit panel , in a plain-spoken opinion - narrowed the injunction to the fourteen plaintiff states but found that the United States is unlikely to succeed on the merits. 

A divided Eleventh Circuit panel rejected [2021 WL 5768796] Florida's  challenge to the Medicare CMS Interim Rule.  The majority explained：

Unvaccinated staff continue to pose a significant threat to patients because the virus that causes COVID-19 is highly transmissible and dangerous.  The Secretary cited data reflecting that the virus spreads readily among health care workers and from health care workers to patients and that such spread is more likely when health care workers are unvaccinated. Id. In addition, the Secretary found that due to the same factors that qualified them for enrollment (age, disability, and/or poverty), patients covered by Medicare or Medicaid are “more susceptible” than the general population “to severe illness or death” if they contract COVID-19.

- GWC

Fifth Circuit overturns nationwide injunction on vaccine mandate for health care workers | Courthouse News Service

By Daniel Conrad

(CN) — A federal appeals court Wednesday overruled a lower court’s nationwide injunction against a Biden administration mandate that required healthcare workers at federally funded facilities to receive Covid-19 vaccines.

In the underlying lawsuit, a federal district court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the mandate, which was being challenged by 14 states’ attorneys general.

The mandate would cut federal funding to Medicare- and Medicaid-certified hospitals, hospices and other care facilities if they employ unvaccinated workers.

But the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which hears appeals from the federal courts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — was unconvinced that the lower court justified its injunction’s wide scope.

“The question posed is whether one district court should make a binding judgment for the entire country,” wrote the panel of three judges, who issued an unsigned “per curiam” opinion representing their views as one voice.

Noting that the Fifth Circuit has permitted one federal judge to issue nationwide policies in a 2015 immigration lawsuit filed by the state of Texas, the appellate panel differentiated the present vaccine mandate case from the immigration one, where there exists a “constitutional command for ‘uniform’ immigration laws.”

“Lacking is either the constitutional uniformity principle in Texas or that case’s concern that patchwork rulings would undermine an injunction limited to certain jurisdictions,” the panel wrote.

The 14 states challenging the mandate before the Fifth Circuit are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

With this injunction overturned, the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate remains in effect in 26 states. The 14 states suing in the case before the Fifth Circuit, and 10 states that successfully sought an injunction for the mandate in late November, are temporarily exempted.

In that case, a Missouri federal judge said the mandate “challenges traditional notions of federalism.”

On Monday, Dec. 13, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue an injunction requested by New York healthcare workers who challenged a state mandate requiring them to get vaccinated against Covid-19.