Dunleavy protests unconstitutional ‘insult to personal freedom of health-care heroes,’ as Alaska joins another lawsuit against Biden

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Calling a new federal mandate for health-care workers an “insult to personal freedom to heath-care workers,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy joined a coalition of states Wednesday in a lawsuit seeing to block the Biden Administration’s effort to make health care providers force their employees to take the Covid-19 vaccine.

A new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service rule forces Covid vaccines for almost every full-time, part-time, volunteer or contract employee working in health care settings that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding. CMS estimates more than 10.3 million Americans would fall under this overarching mandate.

“This new rule is an insult to the personal freedoms of the health-care heroes who have been critical to Alaska’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Dunleavy said. “This is unconstitutional and yet another example of the Biden Administration’s overreach on issues that should be left to the states.”

Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and attorneys general from nine other states filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

The states seek an injunction to prohibit CMS from enforcing the mandate on grounds that the rule violates the 10th Amendment, the federal Administrative Procedures Act and other federal laws.

“The 10th Amendment prohibits federal agencies from taking away powers that are reserved to the states, which know best how to enact the kinds of public health measures to best fit the needs of its citizens,” said Attorney General Taylor. “This rule would punish our rural hospitals and countless health care workers across Alaska by withholding Medicare and Medicaid funding if they don’t comply with a mandate. The courts have already stopped one overreaching federal vaccine mandate in the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, and we hope this one will be blocked as well.”

The CMS mandate covers a broad group of Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers and suppliers, including rural health clinics, hospitals, long-term care facilities and home health agencies. Under the rule, health care workers must receive their first vaccine dose by Dec. 5 and be fully vaccinated no later than Jan. 4. Unlike the proposed Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule, CMS’s regulations provide no mechanism for employees to undergo testing rather than be vaccinated.

The rule makes exceptions only for specific medical or religious reasons.

The health care industry already faces a worker shortage in nearly all areas, likely to be exacerbated by the CMS mandate. There are critical shortages of nursing aides and nurses at nearly a quarter of all American long-term care facilities. The lawsuit estimates that if the CMS mandate is left in place, more than 200,000 healthcare workers could lose their jobs.

The lawsuit calls the mandate “an affront to the millions of healthcare workers who risked their lives in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to care for strangers and friends in their communities,” and that the federal government has cast aside the health care workers who have personal reasons for not wanting the COVID-19 vaccine.

In addition to Alaska, the states in the lawsuit are Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming. Read the full complaint at this link.

Last Friday, Dunleavy and 10 other governors and attorneys filed a lawsuit against President Biden over the vaccine mandate for private employers. He also joined a lawsuit

22 COMMENTS

  1. I’m sorry did I mistakenly take this picture for our governor!? This man sounded like a person who actually leads.
    If you Dunleavy are so damn interested in people’s right to choose this shot then where the hell is your comments regarding your pos nurse hatchitjob ?!?
    “It’s safe for pregnant mothers “
    How in the hell does she get that statement by your ears Dunleavy? Are you completely stupid?
    I’m having a severe case of buyers remorse!!!
    Dunleavy if you are deaf to your constituents then send your pregnant daughters to nurse hatchitjob for the injection . After all it was-stated as “ safe”!

    • Do you always have the knives out for the governor? Just because Murkowski says something stupid he has to come out and speak against it? This article is in no way even related to that. Chill out dude and find a cloud to yell at.

  2. There is already a company that is requiring vaccine with NO exceptions at all accepted for it’s LTC/ALF’s. The deadline has passed and people who had exemptions are now unemployed.

  3. Makes you wonder? more too the story then said?
    Health care folks witness all! and they DON’T want
    the vaccine?
    Questions left to ponder!

  4. Maybe it’s time to take away all the federal funding these states get. You want to be your own little country, to do whatever you want (despite vaccine mandates not really being a new or Biden only thing), then maybe you don’t get federal help. I guarantee many of the taxpayers would be happy to stop carrying red states that can’t seem to survive without federal socialist money.

    Mandating inoculations and vaccines have been around for 200 years. But sure, go off like it’s a Biden wants to be king move. I would LOVE to see these people go back in time and tell someone like George Washington that he has a “king complex” by mandating smallpox inoculations.

    The irony of Republicans claiming Biden has a king complex while we’re still hearing about Trump and his “I really won the election” sob story. And being angry with Republicans because they wouldn’t throw all the legal blue votes in the trash so the red votes were #1.

    Let’s see. Usurp by definition = take (a position of power or importance) illegally or by force (like an, oh I don’t know, insurrection). Gee whiz. That sure do sounds like a man who wants to be king.

    • Your first sentence is accurate.
      When states become utterly dependent upon the federal teat, we have a consolidation of power problem that looks akin to a Communist regime.

    • This place is about five major domestic white nationalist uprisings and an election rigging from turning into The Handmaiden’s Tale — except Alaska will NOT be the United States.

    • And we have yet another statist koolaid drinker here, sadly.
      .
      It’s always amusing to read you mindless, corporate-media-propagandized sheep bleating about how the victims of authoritarianism (e.g., Covidian mandates) are somehow the real ‘authoritarians’. Victim-blaming and shaming at its finest.

    • B. You are exactly correct , except the Insurrection happened in the wee hours of November 4, 2020.

    • All right B, let’s go back in time for a moment. As we have heard, General Washington required the troops to be inocculated against the small-pox, an illness that was decimating the Continental Army as it struggled to survive the hardships of war. The small-pox was in fact being used as a type of biowarfare, as most of the enemy British troops had acquired natural immunity, and were passing it on intentionally to both the troops and the general population through direct contact. The idea of innoculation was brought to him, though General Washinton’s advisors were split on the efficacy of this new method for acquiring immunity to the scourge, and Washington himself was troubled by the decision he had to make. It has been said that General Washington, as was his way, not only pondered and reasoned, but also prayed for guidance before reaching his conclusion. In the end, his firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence provided him with the answer he sought, and the orders were given.
      A decision that proved to be correct in the end. Has our current despot in chief followed the same methodology and principles? Likely not. Furthermore, President Washington later died from what appeared to be a common cold, an illness that came on after he caught a chill while riding his horse through snow and rain. He refused to be late for dinner, and did not put on a dry set of clothes. When he could not get out of bed next morning, his doctors prescribed the treatment which we now know most likely directly caused or certainly hastened his death–he was “bled”. At the time, it was believed that removing blood from the body that had been contaminated with sickness would remove that sickness. This was done to him not once, but three times. It is estimated that 40 percent of his blood was literally drained out of him. We now know that this treatment made him sicker and weaker, but at the time it was being used with some positive results a great deal of dangerous side effects and unintended consequences. By your line of reasoning, shall we now decree that all patients be bled in order to cure them, despite the danger, because George Washington did it? No, a better approach would be to let each individual make their own decision after pondering and reasoning upon an improved understanding of science and the natural world, and praying with a firm reliance upon the Protection of Divine Providence.

  5. About time. A lot of great health care professionals have been eliminated because of their decision not to take the shot. Most of them have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic and have had the virus and know that their immune system works for them. So we throw away these heroes? I should hope not. We all know by now that the shot doesn’t protect you from getting or spreading the virus so what’s the point?

  6. Yo B, how much has your grocery, gas bill, utility bill, and very soon your tax bill gone up lately? Do you like the Arabs taking all the oil money that could come from here? Do you like all the civil unrest going on? How about the instability over the entire world going on? You might want to brush up on your Mandarin (I’m not talking oranges either!) Enjoy!

  7. I have to agree with Jim Coleman on this one. As someone on a fixed income, the rise in prices has played hob with what was left of my budget.This is from Biden and is going to get worse. Yet Biden persists in throwing more money at it. Do we want to go back to the days of the 1970’s? Or worse? 6.2% rise in the CPI. And more to come? Federal mandates carry other problems. If people get used to them, pretty soon there is no reason to take them off. First Covid, the what is next? Earthquakes? Floods? Any other natural disasters? Divide the people to conquer them. I never believed I would see it happen here, but it looks like it is coming. And every time a state welcomes a new federal program, it comes with a price tag of matching funds from the state. That’s one reason there is no real cutting in a state budget. A good part of that budget is dedicated to the required matching funds from federal programs. Like it or not, there is socialism already

  8. Hohoho…
    You forgot to include blame for poor reviews for the latest Jack Reacher book…
    FYI= Referring to OPEC members as « Arabs » illustrates a simplistic understanding of Middle-Eastern countries and ignorance that this oil group also includes Ecuador, Venezuela (South America) and Nigeria (Africa).
    Many people have told me Alaska is part of Canada…

  9. Election Integrity Mike and Kevin, the rest of this crap is a distraction. Do your job, you are not fooling anyone putting another shining object in front of us..

  10. So, now our governor is advocating that some of the people who work the closest to the sickest patients in our hospitals should be allowed to do so even if they are at risk of contracting and spreading the disease themselves. I’m not aware there is anything in the Constitution, either of the nation or the state, that gives anyone the right to force their infections on others.
    Most health care workers have been vaccinated for many diseases, polio, measles, rubella, hepatitis, smallpox, with reasonable allowances made for medical reasons. Despite all the nonsense about how the Covid vaccines are ineffective, dangerous, change ones DNS, etc., etc., it makes perfectly good and reasonable sense to require that all workers who interact with the public, especially health care workers, get vaccinated. The vaccine has been proven safe and effective.
    If you don’t want to get vaccinated, that is surely your right. Just remember, if you choose that route, there will be consequences that you have no right to gripe about. You make the choice, you live with it. No special dispensations. You do not have the right to endanger others.

    • The ‘vaccines’ (sic) have been proven, by SCIENCE, to be both UNsafe and INeffective.
      .
      But apparently, no amount of evidence is going to dissuade all you Covidian Cult true believers from parroting the official narrative, as laughably false as it is.

      • Is this some new use of the word SCIENCE, with which I am unfamiliar? Or maybe someone peering into the magic mirror in the rabbit hole of this is that and that is this and both are not what the other isn’t?

        • Homo, “science” does not consist of blind and ignorant faith in the pronouncements of those in authority — who are usually corrupted and pushing their own agendas under the mantle of “protecting the public”.
          .
          Your gullibility and naivete are as astounding as they are dangerous and contemptible.

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