Governor Pete Ricketts praised a decision from a federal court in Missouri on Monday that paused the Biden Administration's federal vaccine mandate.
The temporary injunction against the Biden Administration does not allow it to enforce a vaccine mandate by early December for health-care workers in 10 states, including Nebraska.
Governor Ricketts said during his monthly call-in show on Monday that his concern is with staffing hospitals.
“I talked to administrators for example who were telling me they would for example have to stop delivering babies because they wouldn't have enough staff,” Ricketts said. “So this would actually impact the quality of care that we'd be providing in our rural settings, especially because they wouldn't have the staff because people weren't going to take the vaccine.”
The nine other states included in the injunction are Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Ricketts said he thinks the vaccine is a useful tool, but should be a personal health choice. If the injunction is appealed, the case would be handed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis.