FEDERAL Judge Jesse Furman is blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its mandate requiring some health workers to receive regular vaccinations and take anti-viral medication to prevent disease.
The judge ruled that the mandate “violates the First Amendment right of our nation’s medical workers to free speech by compelling them to express a particular medical message, or to refrain from having their beliefs expressed.”
“It follows that even well-meaning government action regarding medical health could be properly viewed as a viewpoint discriminatory burden on doctors, nurses, and others whose speech does not align with the worldview of the health agency imposing it,” Furman wrote.
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Federal officials claimed that the mandate was needed to make sure medical professionals were aligned with government positions about protecting public health. But Furman said that justification doesn’t hold up under the First Amendment’s free speech clause.
“The court finds the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs ‘has no legitimate reason’ to believe that its speech regulating speech ‘is directed at or intended to demean, stigmatize, or ‘grossly offend’ any speaker or host or any group by suggesting that individuals’ ‘personal values may be a limiting factor in the work environment for others,’” he said.
In 2015, the Obama administration appointed a medical expert to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He recommended that clinicians and other health professionals be required to get vaccinated every year and take this measure as a precaution to prevent illnesses.
Under that official, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added “professional immunization feedback” to its influenza fact sheet, sparking a deluge of complaints from health professionals. The CDC is “truly offended,” the panel said, because they rely on their physicians, nurses and other employees to provide free or low-cost vaccinations.
Conservatives pointed out that the CDC’s mandate violates the Constitution by requiring speech to which they are not obligated.
Furman agreed, even though the mandate has been implemented for decades. But the Trump administration claimed in an amicus brief that it “merely confirms” existing federal policy and isn’t an “unreasonable exercise of discretion.”