The U.S. Supreme Court last week decided cases to uphold the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) emergency regulation requiring health care workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. However, due to a separate lawsuit, CMS remains blocked from enforcing the mandate in a single state: Texas.
The State of Texas filed suit in December against U.S. Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to block the mandate in the Lone Star State. This separate case was not among those the Supreme Court heard. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction on the mandate, meaning that it cannot be implemented until the case is ultimately decided.
HHS quickly appealed the decision and filed a motion to remove the injunction until the appellate court weighs in. No ruling has been made to date on that motion.
“Given the Supreme Court’s resolution of the merits of each of these claims, the substantiality of Defendants’ arguments on appeal, together with the balance of hardships, weigh heavily in favor of granting a stay pending appellate review,” the HHS said in its motion.
While the nation’s highest court has decided in favor of the CMS mandate in separate lawsuits allowing the regulation to go forward in 49 states and the District of Columbia, the constitutional right to due process means that Texas will get its day in court for this individual case.
In tandem with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the CMS vaccine mandate last week, the justices struck down a similar mandate from the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration, which would have applied to all employers of 100 or more workers.
Six of the justices decided that OSHA exceeded its rule-making authority with its vaccine mandate, with three dissenting. Five justices agreed with the Biden Administration that the CMS requirement fell within the scope of powers conferred on the agency by Congress. Four justices did not agree.
“Of course the vaccine mandate goes further than what the [Secretary of Health & Human Services] has done in the past to implement infection control. But he has never had to address an infection problem of this scale and scope before,” the majority justices wrote in their CMS decision. “In any event, there can be no doubt that addressing infection problems in Medicare and Medicaid facilities is what he does.”
