Radiologists have joined the American Medical Association in urging courts to preserve policies that require federal contractors to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
AMA filed new legal briefs Tuesday, pressing the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the 6th and 11th circuits to suspend lower-level judges’ orders denying such mandates. The nation’s largest physician lobbying group said it is joined in the fight by the Society of Interventional Radiology and more than a dozen other leading medical organizations.
In a Wednesday update, the doc groups said COVID-19 continues to pose a “grave danger to public health,” which is why they support widespread vaccination requirements as the most effective strategy to end this “unprecedented and ongoing” crisis.
“SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, has wreaked havoc in communities across the country, taxed hospitals to the point of rationing care, upended the lives of countless families, and killed over 794,000 Americans. Widespread vaccination is essential to ending the COVID-19 pandemic and preventing thousands more needless deaths,” AMA, the Society of Interventional Radiology and others wrote in court briefs filed Dec. 14 in the cases of Kentucky v. Biden and Georgia v. Biden. “COVID-19 vaccines authorized or approved by the Food and Drug Administration are safe and effective, and their widespread use is the best way to keep COVID-19 from spreading within workplaces,” they added later.
Physicians charged that maintaining an injunction against the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force’s Guidance for Federal Contractors and Subcontractors would “severely and irreparably harm” workers while undermining the public interest. Others joining the legal fight include the American College of Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Lung Association, among several more.
AMA said it has also filed several briefs across the country hoping to preserve emergency standards from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Issued in November, the OSHA order would cover private companies with 100 or more employees while also offering a testing alternative.
The amicus briefs follow a wave of lawsuits from states hoping to halt vaccination mandates governors have called misguided and overreaching. An appeals court this week also declined to reinstate a third vaccine mandate applying to healthcare works, setting up a possible showdown in the Supreme Court.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.