Hospital official sees hope in judge's ruling

McCOOK, Neb. — A Community Hospital official is cautiously hopeful a federal judge’s ruling against a coronavirus vaccine mandate will make a difference.

“This is preliminary but a win none the less,” said Troy Bruntz, Community Hospital President & CEO.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp in St. Louis granted a preliminary injunction Monday blocking President Joe Biden’s administration from imposing the rule on thousands of health care workers in Nebraska and nine other states that brought the first legal challenge against the requirement.

“It is good to know our concerns about the impacts of this federal regulation were understood and agreed with by our federal court system,” Bruntz said.

“Again, we did not pursue this injunction ‘for political reasons.’ It was purely a practical matter related to the potential devastation this rule could create for rural healthcare specifically and American healthcare in general.”

The court order said that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid had no clear authority from Congress to enact the vaccine mandate for providers participating in the two government health care programs for the elderly, disabled and poor.

The preliminary injunction by St. Louis-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp applies to a coalition of suing states that includes Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Similar lawsuits also are pending in other states.

The federal rule requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million workers nationwide in about 76,000 health care facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. Workers are to receive their first dose by Dec. 6 and their second shot by Jan. 4

The court order against the health care vaccine mandate comes after Biden’s administration suffered a similar setback for a broader policy. A federal court previously placed a hold on a separate rule requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to ensure their workers get vaccinated or else wear masks and get tested weekly for the coronavirus.

Biden’s administration contends federal rules supersede state policies prohibiting vaccine mandates and are essential to slowing the pandemic.

But the judge in the health care provider case wrote that federal officials likely overstepped their legal powers.

“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,” Schelp wrote in his order.

Even under an exceedingly broad interpretation of federal powers, “Congress did not clearly authorize CMS to enact the this politically and economically vast, federalism-altering, and boundary-pushing mandate,” Schelp wrote.

“This is significant for healthcare workers in Nebraska, especially rural hospitals who were facing serious impacts due to this mandate,” said Nebraska Attorney General Peterson. “Today’s ruling immediately prevents enforcement of the mandate. While we do anticipate the federal government will seek immediate review by the Eighth Circuit, we are confident that the analysis by the trial court will be confirmed.”

The court’s preliminary injunction enjoined the Biden Administration from enforcing the vaccine mandate on any “Medicare- and Medicaid-certified [healthcare] providers and suppliers within the States of Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.”

This means that healthcare workers will not need to be vaccinated in order to keep their jobs and that healthcare administrators will not need to implement the federal government’s vaccine policies. In enjoining the mandate, the court concluded that CMS did not have the authority to issue the mandate and that the mandate was arbitrary and capricious.

 Updates on all three lawsuits in response to federal vaccine mandates can be found  here.