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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks about the ongoing efforts to help people after hurricane Ian passed through the area on October 4, 2022 in Cape Coral, Florida. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

(LifeSiteNews) — A federal appeals court on Thursday delivered a win for Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis by upholding the Sunshine State’s prohibition against COVID-19 “vaccine passports.”

In a 2-1 decision on October 6, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ argument that the ban, which forbids companies from requiring Floridians to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19, was unconstitutional, WUSF reported.

Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in the 55-page decision joined by Judge Andrew Brasher that Florida’s vaccine passport ban, “[l]ike any anti-discrimination statute,” defends “individuals by preventing businesses from excluding them from the market.”

“The statute prevents real harm, not some abstract economic impact,” Pryor added. “Without this statute, unvaccinated Floridians risk being turned away from the businesses that make their lives possible — grocery stores, restaurants, fitness gyms, clothing stores, barber shops and hair salons, and even pharmacies.”

The Thursday decision rolled back an August 2021 preliminary injunction that had blocked the state from enforcing its law against the cruise ship industry, a massive revenue-generator for the Sunshine State.

Many cruise lines are headquartered in Florida, and the industry accounts for 149,000 jobs representing $7.69 billion in wages in the state, according to a 2021 report published by Science Direct. Florida also hosts the top three ports of call in the world, which together constitute 59% of the United States’ total cruise ship embarkations.

In 2021, however, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams enjoined the Florida ban, agreeing with Norwegian that the prohibition against a show-me-your-papers COVID-19 response ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

Thursday’s decision overturned Williams’ injunction, allowing Florida to once more bar cruise ships from requiring passengers to show their jab records. The legal victory came days after Norwegian threw up its hands over the issue, opting to scrap its vaccine passport rule along with its testing and masking requirements even before being forced to do so, WUSF reported.

Thursday’s decision is the latest in a series of legal battles between corporations, the federal government, and DeSantis over the issue of vaccine mandates. DeSantis has generated widespread support among conservatives and pushback from his political opposition for taking a strong early stand against so-called vaccine passports and other draconian COVID-related strictures in the Sunshine State.

RELATED: Federal court rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis in vaccine passport skirmish

After its total bans on recreational cruising during the height of the COVID-19 response in 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year offered a loophole to “allow cruise ships to avoid the test-sail requirement and many of the Order’s other requirements by agreeing to vaccinate 95% of their crew and sail with 95% vaccinated passengers.”

The exception ran up against Florida law, which, starting July 2021 with SB 2006, explicitly outlawed vaccine passports for industries in both the public and private sector.

The constitutionality of Florida’s ban was taken up multiple times by federal courts, culminating in Thursday’s decision to once more greenlight the law.

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