The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is launching development of “a hazard review document” for outdoor workers’ exposures to wildfire smoke, building on a multi-agency effort to limit the fires and their effects that the White House launched late last year.
November 15, 2026
The Biden administration is asking Congress to set OSHA’s budget at $655.463 million in fiscal year 2025 as part of a pared-down budget for the Department of Labor (DOL) as a whole -- an increase from current levels but substantially below what the White House sought in prior appropriations requests.
Date:
Chemical companies and trade groups are renewing calls to loosen EPA’s impending rule setting strict worker-protection requirements for the solvent methylene chloride, arguing in recent White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) meetings that the agency must adopt broader exemptions and longer compliance timelines in order to make the policy workable.
Date:
Environmentalists are renewing their calls for EPA to “ban” vinyl chloride, one of five substances the agency is considering prioritizing for risk evaluation under TSCA, saying such a rule is needed to protect workers who use either the cancer-causing chemical or plastics made from it -- including the ubiquitous polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Date:
Supreme Court justices appeared to offer little clarity during Feb. 20 oral arguments on how they will decide when the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) six-year statute of limitations starts to run, appearing torn between concern over fairness to regulated parties and fear of reopening decades-old policies from OSHA and other agencies.
Date:
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has begun review of OSHA’s final rule expected to revive an Obama-era policy allowing worker representatives to take part in enforcement “walkaround” inspections even if they are not employed at the site, despite warnings from industry that the regulation is legally vulnerable.
Date:
An employer seeking to overturn OSHA’s power to craft “necessary or appropriate” safety standards is asking the Supreme Court to take up its case, renewing its claims that the OSH Act’s language is too vague to survive under the “nondelegation” doctrine but adding for the first time that even a clear grant of such “major” authority would be unconstitutional.
Date:
Without a public announcement, OSHA has updated its nearly 30-year-old enforcement handbook for the process safety management (PSM) standard, adding dozens of interpretations the agency previously set out in responses to stakeholders’ letters questioning various aspects of the rule’s meaning or application.
Date:
At least four conservative justices on the Supreme Court appear open -- if not eager -- to overturn the 40-year-old principle of Chevron deference, though their success hinges on whether they can convince at least one more of their colleagues to join them in striking down the doctrine that requires courts to defer to OSHA and other agencies’ reasonable interpretations of vague statutory text.
Date:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit will not revisit its ruling upholding as constitutional the OSH Act provisions granting OSHA’s standard-setting authority, after the judges rejected claims by a contracting company that the decision was incorrect as a matter of law and created a circuit split on when the agency must regulate to address workplace dangers.
Date: