I am continuing the fight against President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates, and now I’m seeking to defend liberty for Louisiana’s healthcare workers. My office has filed an additional lawsuit against Biden’s mandates, in this case the mandate on our healthcare workers.

Put simply: Biden’s healthcare mandate is an attempt to turn last year’s healthcare heroes into this year’s unemployed.

Biden’s bureaucrats at CMS are threatening the jobs of millions of our healthcare heroes who risked their lives last year caring for our neighbors during the pandemic. What’s more: the mandate once again gives more rights and protections to illegal aliens than American citizens. The federal government will not impose medical tyranny on Louisiana’s people without my best fight.

A second set of states has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers.

The latest suit, dated Monday, was filed in Louisiana on behalf of 12 states and comes less than a week after another lawsuit challenging the rule was filed in Missouri by a coalition of 10 states.

“The federal government will not impose medical tyranny on Louisiana’s people without my best fight,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a news release announcing the lawsuit.

Both lawsuits say the vaccine mandate threatens to drive away health care workers who refuse to get vaccinated at a time when such workers are badly needed. They also contend the rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services violates federal law and unconstitutionally encroaches on powers reserved to the states.

The Louisiana lawsuit quotes from Friday’s order by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocking a broader Biden administration vaccine mandate that businesses with more than 100 workers require employees to be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or wear masks and be tested weekly for COVID-19.

Borrowing language from the 5th Circuit, the Louisiana lawsuit calls the health care worker vaccine requirement a “one-size-fits-all” sledgehammer. In addition to Louisiana, the suit covers Montana, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

This unconstitutional mandate will upend the state budget, putting billions of dollars at risk. Perhaps even more devastating is the healthcare shortages it will create, affecting the most vulnerable of the State’s citizens.

The lawsuit challenges the legality of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ mandate on nearly every full-time employee, part-time employee, volunteer, and contractor working at a wide range of healthcare facilities receiving Medicaid or Medicaid funding.
The Biden Administration enacted their latest unlawful overreach despite acknowledging that there are staff shortages for almost all categories of employees at almost all kinds of health care providers and suppliers.

Biden seems to forget that coercion is not consent. But I will remind him in court as early and as often as it takes that the rule of law cannot be broken, even by the biggest of bullies.