On Nov. 15, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s office published a press release announcing that West Virginia, and 11 other states, joined a lawsuit against the Biden Administration in opposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthcare workers, including those working for Medicare and Medicaid certified providers and suppliers.
The release states that “The 12-state coalition filed the lawsuit and an accompanying request for a preliminary injunction Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.”
Earlier this month, we reported that 10 state attorneys general used the Biden administration over the CMS vaccine mandate that had been created through the issuance of an interim final rule, asserting federal overreach.
Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland reported that “On Nov. 10, ten Republican state attorneys general sued to stop the mandate. The attorneys general of Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire jointly filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis.”
The press release continues, “The lawsuit notes that the vaccine mandate causes grave danger to vulnerable persons whom Medicare and Medicaid were designed to protect—the poor, sick, and elderly—by forcing the firing of ‘healthcare heroes’ who are essential to providing vital medical services.”
Further, “According to CMS, the vaccine mandate targets about a quarter of the nation’s healthcare workers, who have chosen not to get vaccinated. Its core objective is ‘to coerce the unvaccinated workforce into submission or cause them to lose their livelihoods.’ The end result—without the injunction sought by the states—will be healthcare workers losing their jobs and America’s most vulnerable populations losing access to necessary medical care.”
In addition to West Virginia, attorneys general from Louisiana, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah are plaintiffs in the case.
