Tag: mandate

Supreme Courtroom Lets Vaccine Mandate for New York Well being Care Employees

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Supreme Courtroom Lets Vaccine Mandate for New York Well being Care Employees

“Faced with an particularly contagious variant of the virus in the midst of a pandemic that has now claimed the lives of in excess of 750,000 in the United States and some 55,000 in New York, the point out made a decision as an crisis evaluate to involve vaccination for all staff members at overall health treatment services who might grow to be contaminated and expose some others to the virus, to the extent they can be properly vaccinated,” a unanimous a few-judge panel of the appeals court docket wrote in an unsigned view. “This was a reasonable work out of the state’s electrical power to enact procedures to protect the general public well being.”

In an unexpected emergency application inquiring the Supreme Court to intercede, the health care workers’ lawyers wrote that the requirement “imposes an unconscionable option on New York wellness treatment workers: abandon their faith or reduce their careers and their very best indicates to supply for their family members.”

Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s solicitor normal, responded that the state did not allow a spiritual exemption for its longstanding needs for measles and rubella. The health care exemption for the vaccination necessity, she additional, was “tightly constrained in the two scope and period,” making very handful of men and women qualified for it.

As a standard make any difference, she wrote, “achieving higher vaccination rates in significantly susceptible configurations is of the utmost great importance.”

In his dissent, Justice Gorsuch wrote that guarding religious liberty warranted a distinct method.

“Today, we do not just fail the applicants,” he wrote. “We fall short ourselves.”

“We allow for the point out to insist on the dismissal of countless numbers of health care employees — the incredibly exact same people New York has depended on and praised for their service on the pandemic’s front lines in excess of the last 21 months,” the justice wrote. “To insert insult to injury, we make it possible for the condition to deny these folks unemployment gains, way too. 1 can only hope today’s ruling will not be the ultimate chapter in this grim tale.”

Justice Gorsuch experienced invoked similar reasoning in the Maine case.

“Where several other states have adopted religious exemptions, Maine has charted a unique training course,” he wrote at the time. “There, overall health treatment workers who have served on the front line of a pandemic for the final 18 months are now becoming fired and their methods shuttered. All for adhering to their constitutionally safeguarded spiritual beliefs. Their plight is worthy of our focus.”

Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.

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Maine Court Upholds Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers

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Maine Court Upholds Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently affirmed the Maine District Court’s denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction challenging Maine’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers.[1] The plaintiffs, a group of unvaccinated health care workers, raised constitutional and statutory challenges to the mandate in their requests for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. In its decision, the First Circuit emphasized the validity of Maine’s purpose in issuing the mandate and emphasized a state statute that sets this matter apart from similar challenges throughout the country.

In May 2019, the Maine legislature enacted a statute that disallowed religious or philosophical exemptions from all vaccine mandates.[2] The law took effect in early 2020 after nearly three-quarters of voters rejected a referendum opposing the law.

In managing the COVID-19 pandemic, Maine faces two issues that factor seriously into its risk profile: the largest population of elderly citizens by the percentage of any state in the country and a limited health care workforce. Public health authorities in Maine, therefore, sought to reach a vaccination rate of 90% to stop community spread and protect its most vulnerable residents. Despite several efforts to encourage and incentivize vaccination, the state was unable to reach its 90% goal. As the Delta variant emerged, the state deemed the number of outbreaks occurring in health care facilities unacceptable. On August 12, 2021, the state issued a vaccine mandate for all workers in licensed health care facilities. The mandate, which included only a medical exemption, did not include a religious exemption for on-site employees per the above-mentioned 2019 statute.

With the enforcement of the mandate set to begin on October 29, 2021, plaintiffs sought relief by way of a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, both of which the District Court denied. On appeal, the First Circuit affirmed the lower court and rejected the appellants’ constitutional challenges. Under the First Amendment Free Exercise clause, the court subjected the mandate to rational basis review after determining that it was facially neutral and generally applicable. The mandate’s medical exemption furthers Maine’s interest in protecting the health of its most vulnerable residents, the court determined, whereas a religious exemption would defeat that purpose. In declining to apply strict scrutiny, the court wrote, “Few interests are more compelling than protecting public health against a deadly virus.”

The court put litigants in other states on notice by distinguishing why the Maine plaintiffs’ challenge failed whereas challenges elsewhere succeeded. In New York, for example, a group of similarly aligned plaintiffs succeeded in challenging a comparable vaccine mandate for health care workers.[3] There, the district court granted a preliminary injunction on the grounds that New York eliminated its religious exemption after promulgating the mandate.

While the broader implications of the First Circuit’s decision remain unknown, employers in the health care sector should track their state’s public health authorities closely as new mandates roll out across the country. As the Delta

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Intermountain Healthcare vaccine mandate: COVID vaccine now required

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Intermountain Healthcare vaccine mandate: COVID vaccine now required

Intermountain Healthcare announced Wednesday it will require all of its caregivers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

The requirement is meant “to comply with federal vaccination requirements announced by President (Joe) Biden” on Sept. 9, system officials said.

Dr. Mark Briesacher, chief physician executive, noted it’s been 20 months since the first COVID-19 patient was admitted to Intermountain Medical Center. Since then, he said it’s been “remarkable” to watch the caregivers at the system respond to the pandemic.

“I can’t thank the nurses and physicians, and all of our health care teams and everyone who supports them at Intermountain enough for what they’ve done. It’s been truly remarkable,” Briesacher said during a news conference.

After reviewing the rules from the Biden administration, he said it “became clear that we need to comply with these rules, because this is about caring for people.”

Intermountain Healthcare leaders received guidance from the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, which told them the key point of the new rules is that within facilities that work within a federal contract, everyone who works there needs to be vaccinated.

Briesacher said that’s why the system decided to take a “one Intermountain” approach to it.

The system cares for patients with different forms of federal insurance, “and it really comes down to that bottom line of we’re going to be there for people when they need us.” Four out of every 10 of the system’s patients have federal Medicare or Medicaid support, he added.

Intermountain has come up with an approach focused on “listening,” answering questions, and helping people through the decision-making process, according to Briesacher.

Employees can submit medical and religious exemptions “and we’re going to work through those very carefully, thoughtfully, with an open mind, in a generous way to understand those concerns and honor those exemptions,” Briesacher said.

He called the mandate “just the next thing for us to work on together.”

Intermountain Healthcare already requires it employees to receive vaccines for hepatitis, whooping cough, the annual flu, measles, mumps and rubella.

“What these all have in common is that these are viruses and bacteria that are easily spread through a community if that community is vulnerable and not immune to them,” Briesacher said.

Those who don’t start the process to get vaccinated or request an exemption will be “separated” from the company, he said.

“As a health care organization, Intermountain requires immunizations because they protect us and others — patients, members, colleagues, families and communities — from illness and disease, like COVID-19. There is overwhelming evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” the newly released company policy states.

Intermountain said more than 75% of its caregivers are already fully vaccinated and up to 85% have received one dose.

“Vaccination efforts nationally, and specifically in the Intermountain West, have proven central to reducing the spread of the virus and saving lives,” according to the policy.

More than 200 million people in America have been vaccinated against COVID-19, including 1.94 million in Utah who have

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