On January 13, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a Per Curiam decision reversing the stays of CMS’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers that were previously ordered by the U.S. District Courts for the Western District of Louisiana and the Eastern District of Missouri, and allowing CMS to enforce its mandate nationwide. Those lower courts’ rulings were appealed to the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Fifth and Eight Circuits, respectively. The Fifth Circuit limited the scope of the nationwide stay ordered by the Louisiana court to the 14 states that were parties to that case, while the Eighth Circuit upheld the Missouri court’s stay, which applied to the ten states involved in that case. Accordingly, upon the issuance of the Appeals Courts’ rulings, CMS was authorized to resume implementation and enforcement of its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in the 26 states not subject to a preliminary injunction. CMS appealed the stays to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard argument on January 7, 2022.
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