A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request for a stay of September's lower court order pending an appeal. It further sped up the hearing process by setting a Dec. 13 deadline for opening briefs.
The vaccination mandate was supposed to have taken effect by Jan. 12, though the appellate court blocks enforcement until sometime in March when the appeal hearing will be registered.
The judge who began the vaccination mandate followed the advice of a court-appointed receiver who decided to manage the state prison health care system after a federal judge in 2005 discovered that California failed to provide adequate medical care to prisoners.
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In addition to requiring COVID-19 shots for prison workers, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar required vaccinations or exemptions for inmates who want in-person visits or who operate outside jails, including inmate firefighters.
The stay "puts both the prison staff and the incarcerated population at greater risk of infection," announced Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office, which represents inmates in a long-running lawsuit over medical conditions in state prisons.
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The mandate was opposed by the state's prison agency and Gov. Gavin Newsom, even though his administration beforehand had ordered vaccinations or testing for all state employees, including correctional employees.
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The politically powerful California Correctional Peace Officers Association had argued that the mandate could create staff shortages if employees refuse to comply.
Messages to the governor's office and corrections officials seeking comment on Friday's stay weren't immediately returned.
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The original vaccination order was meant to head off another COVID-19 outbreak like the one that killed 28 inmates and a correctional officer at San Quentin State Prison last year.
"Once the virus enters a facility, it is very difficult to contain, and the dominant route by which it enters a prison is through infected staff," Tigar reasoned.
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Over 50,000 state prisoners — more than half of California's state inmate population — have had a confirmed case of COVID-19, and no less than 242 have died from the disease, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) statistics.
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Meanwhile, officials said that a COVID-19 outbreak in Grand Traverse County's jail earlier this month ended in positive tests for half the people incarcerated there and a temporary pause on all transfers to Michigan prisons.
"We've had the highest number of COVID cases that we've experienced during the whole pandemic," announced Capt. Chris Barsheff, jail administrator. "We've already run the quarantine periods — the majority of the people were asymptomatic and we found out they were positive because we do regular testing."
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