A federal district court judge at a recent hearing questioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over its justification for not including worker safety provisions in its revised swine slaughter facility inspection rule, according to a Public Citizen attorney who is suing over the rule for failing to protect against increased risks to facility workers.
November 15, 2026
Anthony Lacey
Anthony Lacey was the Managing Editor of Inside EPA and Environment Next until April 2021. He joined Inside Washington Publishers in 2004 as an associate editor on Clean Air Report, and previously covered a wide range of news for the regional Hull Daily Mail newspaper in his home country of England. He grew up in the northeast of England and earned a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of London, and a higher education certificate in newspaper writing from the NCFE awarding organization.
Archived Articles
A federal appeals court is slated to hear arguments this spring in a case in which OSHA is challenging a decision by its review panel that raised the bar for when the agency can cite a company for “repeat” violations of workplace safety requirements and impose stricter penalties than for non-repeat “serious” violations.
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An Oklahoma refiner is urging a federals appeals court to scrap an OSHA review panel’s decision upholding an agency enforcement action against an Oklahoma refiner for alleged process safety management (PSM) standard violations, a finding that industry officials say unfairly and “dramatically” expands the PSM rule’s reach.
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A federal appeals court judge says a psychiatric hospital faces a “tough argument” to make in its appeal of a penalty OSHA imposed under its General Duty Clause authority for not adequately addressing workplace violence, doubting the facility’s claim that the lack of a specific agency directive of how to reduce the hazard violates due process.
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Litigation filed by food workers unions over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) revised swine slaughter facility inspection rule is testing whether the department has a duty to protect workers, with the challengers saying the rule is unlawful because it does not offer such protections while USDA says it is not subject to such a mandate.
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OSHA has issued a final rule that hikes by almost 2 percent the cost of civil penalties it will impose when enforcing against employers for violations of its policies, a move that may result in increases in total penalties imposed as part of a broader effort by OSHA to increase enforcement.
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As it awaits a ruling on the legality of OSHA’s rule rolling back Obama-era recordkeeping and reporting mandates, consumer group Public Citizen is defending its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking data OSHA collected in 2017 under the retained portion of the rule.
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Senators by unanimous consent on Jan. 9 approved the nominations of Cynthia Atwood and Amanda Laihow as members of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), clearing the path for the panel to resume its long-stalled work on reviewing a host of contested OSHA workplace citations and penalties.
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The Senate has confirmed along party lines Paul Ray, the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the White House Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) and currently its acting head, permanently installing him as the top rule reviewer over the objections of worker safety advocacy groups, environmentalists, and others.
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Citing recent OSHA advice, a management-side attorney is urging employers to assess whether their workers face potential hazards from the widespread use of headphones to listen to music even though there is no OSHA standard prohibiting it.
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