Tennessee Joins Lawsuit Challenging CMS Mandate For Healthcare Workers
Photo Credit: Gov. Bill Lee / Facebook
The Tennessee Conservative [By Jason Vaughn] –
Governor Bill Lee has announced that Tennessee will be joining 15 other states in a lawsuit that challenges vaccine requirements for healthcare workers.
The lawsuit was filed on February 4th in the United States District Court for Western District of Louisiana against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In January, the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to the mandate by OSHA that would force all employers with more than 100 employees to require vaccines. However, they still gave permission for the CMS to continue to require vaccination for employees of Medicare and Medicaid certified healthcare providers.
In a Twitter post on Friday, Governor Lee said, “We are renewing a challenge to the CMS vaccine mandate in court so Tennessee health care workers have the right to private health care decisions.”
Besides being a major overstepping of government interference, Lee acknowledged the difficulty that a vaccine requirement places on those facilities.
He continued, “While this mandate represents the worst of federal overreach, it also threatens our ability to staff facilities and provide care for the elderly, disabled, and other high-priority populations.
The lawsuit says that the government’s attempt to force individuals to take the vaccine is a “scheme that hit the skids.”
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It claims that the mandate does not “account for developing data and circumstances. In recent weeks, federal authorities have begun to walk back claims about the efficacy of the three domestically available vaccines against the now dominant omicron variant.”
The lawsuit also argues that the vaccine mandate would force healthcare workers to be out of work if they were unwilling to comply.
“The vaccine mandate also utterly fails to account for changes in the legal and regulatory landscape of mandated vaccines,” the attorneys general wrote in the suit. “The rule was initially designed to work in tandem with mandates on other types of employers, including Head Start Programs, federal contractors, federal employees, and employers with over 100 employees. This would limit the alternative choices of employment for healthcare workers subject to the CMS vaccine mandate, further forcing them to choose vaccination over unemployment.”
About the Author: Jason Vaughn, Media Coordinator for The Tennessee Conservative ~ Jason previously worked for a legacy publishing company based in Crossville, TN in a variety of roles through his career. Most recently, he served as Deputy Directory for their flagship publication. Prior, he was a freelance journalist writing articles that appeared in the Herald Citizen, the Crossville Chronicle and The Oracle among others. He graduated from Tennessee Technological University with a Bachelor’s in English-Journalism, with minors in Broadcast Journalism and History. Contact Jason at news@TennesseeConservativeNews.com
When is Tennessee going to lift the mandate on face masks in our Schools?