Supreme Court ruling means MS hospitals must enforce vaccine mandate for frontline workers
A COVID-19 vaccine requirement for staff at private businesses with over 100 workers was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, but the mandate for all federally funded health care facilities can proceed.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeven, an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s vaccine requirements, praised the ruling for private businesses in a statement released Thursday afternoon.
“Today’s decision is a major win for the United States. It’s a major win for federalism and our system of checks and balances,” Reeves said.
The Republican governor also called the decision a “major loss for politicians who want to usurp the Constitution and our rights.”
The vote to negate the vaccine-or-test requirements for private businesses was decided 6 to 3.
Reeves, though, did not address the vaccine mandate that can now proceed for health care workers, a hot-button issue on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court lifted two injunctions that blocked a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule that more than 17 million workers in the health care industry be vaccinated against the virus.
Both vaccine mandates were heavily contested among the Mississippi Gulf Coast workforce. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch had signed onto two lawsuits that ultimately led to a temporary pause on the requirements.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana had granted an emergency stay blocking vaccine mandates for private businesses in November.
Louisiana Western District U.S. Judge Terry Doughty granted an emergency stay on the CMS mandate in early December, days before Mississippi Gulf Coast health care workers needed to receive their first shot of a two-dose COVID vaccination series in order to meet the requirement for full vaccination by Jan. 4, 2022.
In a statement to the Sun Herald on Thursday, Singing River Health System general counsel Jaklyn Wrigley said the the hospital system was “disappointed” in the ruling which will lead to the termination of unvaccinated nurses at a time when hospitals are severely understaffed.
“Although we intend to make every effort to comply with the CMS mandate, we cannot help but be concerned that the mandate will cause us to lose more frontline health care workers from the state – workers who are already in extremely short supply. Even the loss of one nurse can have a negative impact on the number of patients for whom we are able to deliver care, and the mandate could cause us to lose many more than that,” Wrigley said.
The Coast has been experiencing extreme nursing shortages since the pandemic began, now compounded with increased hospitalizations due to the highly transmissible omicron variant.
Reeves said he considers the COVID-19 safe and effective.
“The issue before the Supreme Court was not about whether the vaccine is safe and effective or if it’s the best tool to protect ourselves from COVID and prevent serious illness due to the virus (I believe it is). It was about whether President Biden can use his power to force Americans to get vaccinated against their will,” Reeves said.
The Sun Herald has reached out to Gulf Coast hospitals Memorial at Gulfport and Merit Health Biloxi and will update this story.
