Week after week, this publication has been producing informative pieces on COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace – see here, here, and here – and for good reason. Employers (and employees) have been grappling with a discordant national landscape of workplace vaccine mandates, including laws that require employers to implement mandatory vaccine policies, laws that prohibit employers from doing so, and the vast in-between where employees may choose to do so.
News hit a crescendo this past week when the U.S. Supreme Court issued decisions (i) blocking the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which would have required employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require regular testing and masking, and (ii) sustaining the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate, which requires COVID-19 vaccinations for workers in most health care settings that receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement.
While we continue to digest the fallout of these decisions, the nation’s largest city has been forging ahead with its own requirements.
To that end, employers here in New York City (NYC) recently and quite suddenly found themselves subject to a local vaccine mandate. On December 6, 2021, lame duck Mayor Bill de Blasio (reflecting NYC’s “walk tall or don’t walk at all” attitude) announced that NYC would be the first major U.S. city to require private sector workers...
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