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Third, the court understood that the long history of CMS infection-control regulations made the vaccine mandate an incremental step, not a sweeping new assertion of authority.
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Second, the court saw the CMS regulation as tailored to the threat COVID poses in the health care setting, whereas the OSHA rule was too indiscriminate in regulating all workplaces with 100+ employees. The court’s unsigned majority opinion was joined by Justice Breyer, Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan - and two of the three median justices Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh. First, the median justices made the difference. The court’s decision confirms what we saw coming out of oral argument. The court therefore stayed the preliminary injunctions imposed by the Missouri and Louisiana district courts blocking the CMS mandate. And as for alternatives and evidence, the court held that CMS’ decisions were “within a zone of reasonableness” and should not be second-guessed by the courts. As for public participation, the court held that the impending winter flu season was sufficient good cause to dispense with advance notice and comment.
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The court recognized that the CMS vaccine mandate “goes further than what has done in the past to implement infection control” but also that CMS “has never had to address an infection problem of this scale and scope before.” And the court noted that vaccine requirements are common in the health care setting and that “healthcare workers and public-health organizations overwhelmingly support” the CMS mandate, which “suggests that a vaccination requirement under these circumstances is a straightforward and predictable example of the ‘health and safety’ regulations that Congress has authorized to impose.”įinally, the court rejected the challengers’ claims that the CMS mandate was unlawfully issued without public participation and did not adequately consider alternatives or the available evidence. Requiring a COVID-19 vaccine for health care workers, the court held, is ultimately no different. Not only that, but CMS routinely regulates the qualifications and duties of health care professionals, justifying these regulations by its power to protect patient safety. The court rejected the challengers’ arguments that the statute “authorizes to impose no more than a list of bureaucratic rules regarding the technical administration of Medicare and Medicaid.” The court cited with approval CMS’ “longstanding practice” of using its statutory authority to regulate “the safe and effective provision of healthcare, not simply sound accounting.” For example, CMS regulations govern how long after admission a patient must be examined, and by whom the procurement and transplant of solid organs tasks that can be delegated by a physician to an advanced-practice provider and the control of infectious diseases within a facility. In its opinion allowing the CMS vaccine mandate to go into effect, the court noted that CMS has broad powers to condition facilities’ participation in the Medicare and Medicaid programs on “requirements as finds necessary in the interest of the health and safety of individuals who are furnished services in the institution.” The court held that CMS reasonably concluded that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate was necessary to protect patient health and safety because “COVID-19 is a highly contagious, dangerous - and especially for Medicare and Medicaid patients - deadly disease.” 28, 2022.Ĭourt relies on congressional authority to protect patient health and safety to uphold the CMS mandate The court’s decisions mean that health care workers at facilities and at suppliers covered by the CMS regulation must be fully vaccinated or receive an approved medical or religious exemption by Feb. Supreme Court in a 5-4 opinion allowed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services vaccine mandate for health care workers to go into effect, but blocked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate by a 6-3 vote.
Supreme Court allows CMS vaccine mandate to go into effect, but blocks OSHA vaccine-or-test mandateĬonsistent with predictions following the oral argument (see below), the U.S.