by Michael J. Marino
A coalition of 22 states, led by Montana Attorney General (AG) Austin Knudsen, called on the federal executive branch to withdraw its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers on Thursday, Nov. 17.
In a press release, the AG’s office stated, “Even though vaccines have proven largely impotent in preventing COVID transmission, studies have shown increased health risks associated with the vaccines, and the justification for the rushed mandate has disappeared, it remains in force.”
Using the Administrative Procedures Act, the coalition of AGs filed a petition requesting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) “take immediate action to repeal its Interim Final Rule (IFR),” which mandates all healthcare workers receive a COVID-19 vaccination. The group alleges the mandate has “violated the rights of healthcare workers” and made staffing shortages in rural Montana even worse than they already were.
Locally, some local healthcare workers at Billings Clinic took issue with the clinic’s demand for all employees to receive the vaccine earlier this year. They also questioned the clinic’s practice of keeping a “roster of everyone who is unvaxxed,” and sending it out as a missive to dozens of employees, according to a YCN story dated July 22, 2022.
On Thursday, AG Knudsen wrote, “The Biden administration relied on a purported emergency to sidestep its normal requirements and rush through its flagrantly unconstitutional mandate. But evidence available at that time, and evidence that has emerged since, demonstrates that full vaccination doesn’t prevent infection or transmission. Breakthrough infections are common, and studies increasingly show heightened health risks associated with the vaccines.” Further, Knudsen stated, “The mandate has limited many patients’ access to needed medical care and imposed substantial costs on patients and healthcare workers without any corresponding benefits. The Biden administration should have never imposed this mandate, and CMS should now throw it in the trash bin where it belongs.”
In the petition, the attorneys general contend that the mandate “violates a state’s sovereign right to enact and enforce its own laws,” and they called it “arbitrary, capricious, and structurally defective.”
The 21 other states who are part of the rulemaking petition include: Wyoming, Virginia, Oklahoma, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Missouri, Mississippi, Kentucky, Kansas, Utah, Texas, South Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Arkansas, Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
To read the petition to repeal the vaccine mandate, go to www.dojmt.gov and click the “News” tab near the top of the page.
