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Nurses protesting COVID-19 jab mandate August 14, 2021.KCENN News/YouTube/Screenshot

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge brought by 10 predominantly Republican-led states against the Biden administration’s COVID jab mandate affecting healthcare workers.

Imposed by the U.S. President Joe Biden in November 2021, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate impacts the roughly 10 million healthcare workers throughout the United States who are employed by facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Though the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s COVID jab mandate for large employers in a 6-3 decision in January, it allowed the healthcare worker mandate to take effect in a separate 5-4 ruling.

READ: Supreme Court blocks Biden’s business vax mandate, allows jab requirements for gov’t healthcare providers

On Monday, the Court declined to hear an appeal by 10 states led by Missouri, which contended that the requirement has been “devastating small, rural, and community-based healthcare facilities and systems throughout the states” as employees quit or are fired over vaccine refusal, USA TODAY reported.

The Court disagreed with the states in an the unsigned October 3 decision, arguing that the jab mandate “falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred upon” the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, and that “ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm.”

The Court expressed concern about the potential harms caused by the coronavirus, noting that healthcare workers are frequently in contact with people who are “elderly, disabled, or otherwise in poor health,” and that “‘fear of exposure’ to the virus ‘from unvaccinated health care staff can lead patients to themselves forgo seeking medically necessary care,’ creating a further ‘ris[k] to patient health and safety.’”

However, the Court didn’t reference the potential for adverse reactions from the experimental jabs themselves, acknowledge that the shots don’t stop the spread of the virus, or make note of the CDC’s updated August guidance recommending equal treatment for both vaccinated and vaccine-free individuals due to naturally-acquired immunity.

RELATED: New CDC COVID guidelines throw out quarantine, allow for benefits of natural immunity

Three conservative justices joined Justice Samuel Alito in a dissent, arguing the Court’s decision would “ripple through administrative agencies’ future decision-making,” and that no “limiting principle” had been articulated to explain “why, after an unexplained and unjustified delay, an agency can regulate first and listen later, and then put more than 10 million dissenting healthcare workers to the choice of their jobs or an irreversible medical treatment.”

The Court’s decision to reject the states’ appeal came after the Biden administration expressly urged it to do so, Bloomberg noted.

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