By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said his office intends to continue to fight the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for healthcare workers, in spite of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision not to enjoin the practice earlier this month.
"We tried," Schmidt said. "We took that case to the U.S. Supreme Court and in the case of the healthcare mandate, a slim majority of the court simply didn't agree with us. We fought to the end. We didn't win, now we're going to go back and continue to fight, because we have no other option."
The healthcare mandate is the only one of the four Schmidt's office has fought that the court said shouldn't be blocked immediately.
"These cases are really tied up in knots," Schmidt said. "The particular case on the healthcare mandate, the CMS case, the Supreme Court, technically, all it did was deny what they call preliminary relief. It said, we're not going to issue an injunction from the court right now, before the case really gets going, that blocks the government from putting this mandate into effect. Instead, we're going to let the case percolate in the lower courts and see what happens."
The argument that they are likely to make in a lower court, either at the 8th Circuit level or in a federal district court in Missouri, is that mandating health care worker vaccines will result in a further shortage of health care workers.
"The department, ostensibly, took note of the potential impact on rural communities," Schmidt said. "We don't think they did it properly, accurately or thoroughly. As a result, they discounted improperly, the reality, which is that if the federal government compels health care workers to get their vaccine, there's going to be a significant number, perhaps particularly in rural communities that simply decline. They'll leave the field. We already have a crisis of staffing in rural health care, rural nursing homes. If you drive, even a small percentage of additional nurses and health care professionals out of the field, we're afraid the result is going to be the closure of some of these facilities and that means that patients no longer have access to services in their communities."
The failure to stop the mandate's implementation immediately could leave some health care workers in that vaccinate or quit position before the court case resolves itself.