November 23, 2021

Arrington Leads Texas Republicans in Amicus Brief Supporting Texas’ Lawsuit Against the Biden Administration’s Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers

Today, Rep. Jodey C. Arrington (TX-19) led a number of his Texas Republican colleagues in filing an Amicus Brief in support of the State of Texas’ lawsuit against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ unconstitutional vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. 

Rep. Arrington has criticized the CMS vaccine mandate since the Agency announced on November 4, 2021 that healthcare professionals working in Medicare and Medicaid-certified facilities must by fully vaccinated by January 4, 2022. 

The Texas delegation’s Amicus Brief outlines the existing healthcare worker shortage throughout Texas, especially in rural communities, and asserts that the CMS vaccine mandate will exacerbate the shortage. 

“The Biden administration’s overreaching and unconstitutional vaccine mandate threatens the livelihoods of healthcare workers and, in turn, jeopardizes access to care for patients in rural America,” said Rep. Arrington. “Using vital CMS funding to strongarm hospitals into imposing unconstitutional mandates onto their workforce is reprehensible and dangerous. I’m proud to lead my colleagues in this Amicus Brief and urge the courts to halt the CMS vaccine mandate, as they’ve done with the OSHA vaccine mandate.”

“Healthcare professionals, once heralded as heroes at the height of the pandemic, are frustrated with the number of non-medical mandates and restrictions that have resulted in burnout, increasing numbers leaving the industry, and suicide,” said David Balat, Director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Right on Healthcare Initiative. “The hospitals and individual staff members know best how to care for themselves and their patients and this mandate from CMS is coming into an environment where there are already critical shortages that stands to make it worse.”

Joining Rep. Arrington's Amicus Brief were Rep. Kevin Brady (TX-8), Rep. Michael Burgess (TX-26), Rep. Dan Crenshaw (TX-2), Rep. Jake Ellzey (TX-6), Rep. Pat Fallon (TX-4), Rep. Louis Gohmert (TX-1), Rep. Ronny Jackson (TX-13), Rep. August Pfluger (TX-11), Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21), Rep. Pete Sessions (TX-17), Rep. Beth Van Duyne (TX-24), and Rep. Roger Williams (TX-25). 

Feel free to forward this newsletter to our fellow West Texans and encourage them to sign up here for the latest updates from Rep. Arrington.