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On Dec. 17, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the 5th Circuit’s stay of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard, which applies to employers with 100 or more employees.
On Dec. 10, the Biden administration released its Fall 2021 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. The agenda lists upcoming rulemakings and other regulatory actions from each agency that the administration expects to publish through the end of the year and into 2022. ABC has prepared a summary of the actions of interest to ABC members by agency.
Courts have blocked three different federal COVID-19 vaccination mandates issued under the Biden administration. Since the court orders staying the different federal mandates are at this time only preliminary, it is premature to say the threat posed by the federal mandates is past. It appears the mandates will be at a minimum delayed, but there will inevitably be appeals, perhaps up to the Supreme Court. There are also many private, state and local mandates that are not affected by these court rulings.
On Dec. 7, ABC applauded a Georgia federal court for granting a nationwide preliminary injunction order against the federal contractor vaccine mandate.
On Dec. 2, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration extended the period for submitting comments on its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings by 30 days, to Jan. 26, 2022. This will begin the process to consider a
On Nov. 15, President Biden signed H.R. 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, into law at the White House. The IIJA authorizes nearly $550 billion in new federal money for infrastructure projects, while renewing approximately $1.2 trillion for existing programs that were set to expire.
In a Nov. 9 press release, ABC and its Alabama chapter announced that they filed a
On Nov. 5, ABC submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration requesting a 60-day extension for the public to submit feedback on its advance notice of proposed rulemaking for
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget has concluded its review of the OSHA COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard rulemaking, which will apply to employers with 100 or more employees as required by President Biden’s Path Out of the Pandemic COVID-19 Action Plan.
On Oct. 28, as a reference for employers and employees, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shared its own internal religious accommodation request form with the public. The EEOC stated, “While the EEOC’s internal forms typically are not made public, the EEOC shared this resource given the extraordinary circumstances employers and employees face due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”