After Court Ruling, OSHA Will Enforce Vaccine Mandate For Large Employers

As MSCI members are well aware, implementation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine and testing mandate for employers with 100 or more workers has been on hold while judicial challenges move forward.

That could change after last week.

On Friday, December 17, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a nationwide stay against the mandate — a move that would allow OSHA to proceed with implementation and enforcement. The court said, “OSHA has demonstrated the pervasive danger that COVID-19 poses to workers — unvaccinated workers in particular — in their workplaces.”

On Saturday, OSHA said it would wait until January 10, 2022 to issue citations for noncompliance “to provide employers with sufficient time to come into compliance.” Additionally, in a statement the White House said, “Especially as the U.S. faces the highly transmissible Omicron variant, it’s critical we move forward with vaccination requirements and protections for workers…”

Opponents almost certainly will challenge the 6th Circuit Court’s decision, but they have not announced that move yet. Prior to Friday’s ruling, opponents of the OSHA mandate had publicly promised to immediately file an application for review by the Supreme Court if the 6th Circuit lifted that stay.

An appeal could happen very quickly. Indeed, most analysts think that it is unlikely the Supreme Court would let this issue linger into the new year.

Last Friday’s ruling came after the White House’s Safer Federal Workforce task force released guidance making clear that the federal government “will take no action to enforce the clause implementing vaccine requirements during the pendency of the stay, or any subsequent court order or injunction.” That statement included the OSHA vaccine mandate and the mandate for federal contractors.

Before any of these judicial developments, on December 15 MSCI hosted a free, one-hour webinar for members to offer an update on the OSHA vaccine and testing rule. While obviously there was been news related to the legal status of the federal mandates, the webinar also provided details about the mandate itself.

We encourage our members to listen to the webinar recording, and to stay tuned to Connecting the Dots for the latest developments. A link for that webinar is here.