22 states ask feds to repeal COVID vaccine mandate for health care workers

Special – Twenty-two state attorneys basic are inquiring the Biden administration to close it is “draconian vaccine mandate” for U.S. well being treatment companies for the reason that it is triggering vital shortages of wellness treatment employees and is justified with out-of-date knowledge and science.

In a petition reviewed solely by Fox News Electronic, 22 Republican state attorneys common, led by AG Austin Knudsen of Montana, demanded that the Wellness and Human Solutions Office (HHS) and Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) repeal the interim closing rule, or IFR, that approved the federal mandate in influence considering that November 2021.

“The more we dig into this, the additional we appear, this interim remaining rule was just totally arbitrary and capricious,” Knudsen told Fox Information Electronic. “The science failed to ever back that the COVID vaccine was at any time heading to stop transmission.”

In the just about 40-page doc, the point out lawyers basic laid out their scenario for repealing the mandate that handles Medicare and Medicaid companies and influences practically all health and fitness treatment workers in the country. It has an effect on 10.4 million personnel at 76,000 health care services as well as house health care providers.

Montana Legal professional Normal Austin Knudsen
(Montana DOJ, Legal professional General’s Office environment Dukas/Common Visuals Team by means of Getty Images)

TENNESSEE SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN RENEWS Get in touch with TO Defend TROOPS FROM Getting FIRED About COVID-19 VACCINE MANDATE

“Pfizer by no means examined its vaccine to see if it prevented transmission of COVID-19,” the AGs wrote. “And when CMS issued the IFR, it did not know whether the vaccines would avert COVID transmission.”

“No info at the time conclusively shown that the vaccines would reduce an infection and transmission,” the AGs reported. They extra that even totally vaccinated people today contracted and transmitted COVID-19, a pattern that has continued even with the introduction of a initially-era booster and the new, bivalent omicron booster, they declare.

“But that did not stop CMS from jamming via the IFR’s draconian vaccine mandate,” the AGs stated.

According to their submitting, scientific tests present that “compelled vaccination of hundreds of thousands of overall health care employees will not meaningfully limit COVID transmission.”

A group protesting the vaccine mandate in Boston. 
(Craig F. Walker/The Boston World by using Getty Images)

“Even worse, the emergency vaccine mandate remaining wellness care facilities — by now having difficulties to maintain required staff ratios — in dire straits, more worsening staffing shortages in the health treatment sector, particularly in rural and frontier States,” the AGs famous.

“When that rule arrived down, and the months preceding that rule coming down, it was the No. 1 telephone connect with and e mail information that my business office gained from overall health treatment staff just terrified of this,” Knudsen informed Fox News Digital.

REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS PLEDGE TO Battle Kid’s COVID VACCINE MANDATE, DEMS Largely SILENT

Knudsen mentioned the mandate has experienced the most important outcome on nursing properties in Montana, in which ten expert nursing properties shut in 2022 because of to a well being care employee lack.

“Now that ‘the pandemic is above,’ and offered the very likely violations of the several statutory and constitutional legal rights … the Secretary and CMS should just take speedy action to repeal the IFR and withdraw the State Surveyor Direction,” the petition said.

Protesters gathered for a rally against COVID-19 vaccine mandates in entrance of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington Jan. 23, 2022. 
(AP Photograph/Patrick Semansky, File)

NYC Employees FIRED More than VACCINE MANDATE BLAST CITY’S REFUSAL TO Follow Courtroom Buy: ‘DESTROYING LIVES’

The AGs mentioned CMS “co-opted the states’ surveyor staffs to guarantee compliance” with the mandate. It issued many directives managing the condition surveyors like federal workforce (the Point out Surveyor Directives).”

The AGs challenged the Biden health and fitness department’s authority in authorizing the mandate, stating that in the 57-yr historical past of the Medicare and Medicaid plans, HHS has hardly ever construed federal statutes “to authorize an industry-wide vaccination prerequisite.” 

They reported courts “should be skeptical” of CMS’s declare that the company can bypass congressional acceptance to impose the rule.

Click Right here TO Increase THE FOX Information Application

“The really simple fact that CMS does not point to distinct statutory authorization and alternatively collects a hodgepodge of distinct statutes to guidance its claimed authority is potentially the greatest evidence of the main issues violation,” the AGs argued.

Attorneys general from Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arizona, Nebraska, Alabama, New Hampshire, Alaska, Ohio, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Indiana, Texas, Kansas, Utah and Missouri all signed the petition.

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.