In a per curiam majority decision issued on January 13, 2022, the United States Supreme Court stayed the implementation of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA”) Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”) that would have obligated employers with 100 or more U.S. employees to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination or weekly COVID-19 testing, plus imposed face covering and other mitigation strategies. Last month, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted another federal appellate court’s earlier stay of the ETS, leaving employers scrambling just before the holidays to develop and disseminate policies and gather vaccination records before the effective date of the ETS (which was deferred until January 10, 2022). With the Supreme Court’s pronouncement, these efforts can be placed on hold for now.
Although recognizing that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (the “Act”) empowers OSHA to issue emergency standards before adhering to ordinarily-required notice-and-comment procedures prior to implementation, the Court noted that this extraordinary power may be exercised “only in the narrowest of circumstances,” where there is the risk of grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful and the emergency standard is necessary to protect employees from such danger. The Secretary of Labor/OSHA (the “Secretary”) had exercised this emergency power only nine times prior to the instant ETS, six of which times were...
A Delaware County doctor has agreed to pay more than $1.6 million back after admitting to filing more than 27,000 fraudulent Medicaid claims. Dr. Patrick Muffley, 56, of Lewis Center, pleaded guilt...