Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and 21 of his counterparts across the country petitioned the Biden administration on Thursday to repeal the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, claiming the policy is “neither lawful nor medically justified.”
The petition, organized by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and signed by 21 other state attorneys general, including Marshall, claims the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services’ reason for the mandate is to “coerce the unvaccinated workforce into submission or cause them to lose their livelihoods.”
The petition was filed petition Thursday under the Administrative Procedures Act urging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and CMS to repeal its Interim Final Rule (IFR) and State Surveyor Guidance requiring participating healthcare facilities to “develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that all staff are fully vaccinated for COVID-19.”
Marshall claimed the mandate “has violated the rights of healthcare workers and worsened staffing shortages in that sector, especially in rural and frontier states like Alabama.”
“The Biden administration’s mandate to impose mass COVID-19 vaccinations on America’s healthcare workers was neither lawful nor medically justified,” Marshall said in a statement Friday. “Even as COVID-19 vaccines have been largely disproven as effective in preventing COVID transmission, studies have also shown increased health risks associated with these vaccines. Yet, the Biden administration continues to double down on healthcare workers across the country who refuse to submit to vaccines that might be harmful to their health. The Biden mandate has caused many medical professionals to quit their jobs rather than be subjected to the medical risks of the vaccines, creating healthcare worker shortages.”
Last year, Alabama’s attorney general joined a lawsuit demanding the White House drop the mandate.
