TUCSON, Ariz., March 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Two cases challenging federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates fell one vote short of complete victory, writes Andrew Schlafly, general counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
In November 2021, the Biden Department of Labor issued an emergency rule requiring all employers with at least 100 employees “to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.” As the U.S. Supreme Court noted, there were sweeping burdens and enormous penalties.
Then the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) promulgated an unprecedented new rule requiring that medical facilities nationwide order their employees, volunteers, contractors, and other workers to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, with no exception for frequent testing. Covered employers would have to fire noncompliant workers or risk fines and termination of their Medicare and Medicaid provider agreements.
Notably absent from court filings, except for an amicus brief filed by Mr. Schlafly, is any mention of adverse reactions reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which numbered nearly 1 million at the time of the filing, including more than 20,000 deaths. VAERS has been cited in 475 federal court decisions, yet it came up not even once in oral argument.
The Court decided 6 to 3 to block the employer mandate, citing the issue of “government by bureaucracy supplanting government by the people.”
In a vote of 5 to 4, the Court upheld the CMS mandate, despite the utter lack of any statutory authority for it, as Justice Thomas noted. The Court rejected the argument that the rule violates a directive in the Medicare statute, §1395, that federal officials may not “exercise any supervision or control over the…manner in which medical services are provided, or over the selection [or] tenure…of any officer or employee.” A strict reading of the statute would mean that nearly every condition of participation the Secretary has long insisted upon could be unlawful.
Schlafly notes that the fight over mandates is far from over.
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
