President Biden has asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the court order blocking his Covid-19 vaccine mandate for federal healthcare workers.
The Daily Wire reports:
In the request, the Biden administration said it was exercising its “express statutory authority” and was protecting Medicare and Medicaid patients through the requirement.
“That requirement will save hundreds or even thousands of lives each month, and the Eleventh Circuit has held that it is a valid exercise of the Secretary’s authority. Yet the requirement has been blocked in ten States by the district court’s preliminary injunction in this case, which a divided panel of the Eighth Circuit declined to stay in a one-sentence order,” said the request.
“This application seeks a stay of that injunction to allow the Secretary’s urgently needed health and safety measure to take effect before the winter spike in COVID-19 cases worsens further,” the request said, also adding: “Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more paradigmatic health and safety condition than a requirement that workers at hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities take the step that most effectively prevents transmission of a deadly virus to vulnerable patients.”
According to POLITICO, the Department of Justice asked that the nation’s high court stop two injunctions on the mandate, one from the U.S. district court for the Western District of Louisiana and one from the U.S. district court for the Eastern District of Missouri. This comes after a federal appeals court out of New Orleans effectively restored the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in 26 states across the country.
In November, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked Biden’s vaccine mandate for health care workers.