As the entire country should know by now, on January 13, 2022, the United States Supreme Court issued an Opinion reinstating the stay of enforcement by OSHA of its Emergency Temporary Standard for COVID-19 (ETS). You can read what we wrote about this opinion, as well as the Supreme Court opinion that eliminated the stay with respect to the CMS Mandate, here.

The Court’s opinion reinstating the ETS stay will likely have the effect of eliminating any possibility of success for OSHA as it continues to litigate over the ETS, and is further likely to dissuade OSHA from seeking to implement a permanent standard with respect to COVID under its normal publication and comment approach. However, that does not mean employers can ignore OSHA, or ignore the necessity to implement policies and procedures to ensure a safe workplace from COVID exposure.

Quite the opposite – OSHA is now going to “double down” on its enforcement with respect to employers by using the OSH Act General Duty Clause for support in issuing citations to employers who fail to take reasonable measures to thwart the spread of COVID to their employees in the workplace.

As we informed you earlier (here and here), OSHA had already started using the General Duty Clause and a newly implemented National Emphasis Program to support the issuance of COVID-19 related citations prior to publishing the ETS. And, with the defeat before the Supreme Court, the Department of Labor Secretary, Marty Walsh, emphasized the continued...

Read Full Story: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/covid-19-ets-gone-employers-must-still-t...