OSHA Vaccine Mandate Back On, With Later Deadline

(from NPR and the Hill) Last Friday evening, an appeal circuit court lifted the stay on the Biden administration rule that requires workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against Covid or undergo weekly testing. The rule had been blocked on Nov. 6, just one day after it was formally issued by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "The harm to the government and the public interest outweighs any irreparable injury to the individual petitioners who may be subject to a vaccination policy," wrote the judge in her ruling. OSHA had estimated that the vaccine-or-test rule could save more than 6,500 lives and prevent over 250,000 hospitalizations in the six months that it would be in effect.

The Labor Department then announced last Saturday that it was pushing back the date for businesses' compliance with its vaccine-or-test mandate. “To provide employers with sufficient time to come into compliance,” the department explained that it would not be issuing any citations for businesses that were not in compliance with the emergency temporary standard before Jan. 10. Noncompliance citations regarding testing requirements would also not be issued before Feb. 9 “so long as an employer is exercising reasonable, good faith efforts to come into compliance with the standard."

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