The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has completed its review of EPA’s draft TSCA risk management rule for the solvent methylene chloride, teeing up formal release of a proposal that a top official has said will signal how the agency plans to regulate other substances and tailor chemical-safety rules to protect workers from occupational exposures.
November 15, 2026
The White House has started interagency review of OSHA’s draft final rule expected to undo a Trump-era rollback of Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting requirements for workplace health and safety data, just as a federal appeals court is preparing to resume long-stayed litigation over the loosened rule.
Date:
A new decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) underscores what the panel says is the higher standard OSHA must meet to show safety violations by a “controlling” employer at a multi-company workplace, scrapping an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) decision that upheld the agency’s citations in one such case.
Date:
The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) is taking up a novel case testing whether a “religious, agricultural, communal colony” in South Dakota is an “employer” subject to the OSH Act, after a member of the group died in a 2020 accident while working in its grain bin.
Date:
A Texas contracting company is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to broadly apply the OSH Act’s “unpreventable employee misconduct” defense, saying an administrative law judge (ALJ) set an unreasonably high bar for invoking it when he upheld an OSHA citation for trench-safety violations against the firm.
Date:
A federal district judge has rejected Amazon’s challenge to a Washington state policy that required it to abate alleged safety violations at a warehouse in Kent, WA, even as it pursues an administrative challenge to the underlying citation, rejecting the company’s argument that it has been deprived of due process in violation of the Constitution.
Date:
OSHA has posted a new regulatory interpretation letter that addresses a host of questions from employers on the Hazard Communication Standard’s (HCS) application to lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, noting several situations when the devices qualify as “consumer products” or “articles” exempt from the rule but highlighting other areas where HCS labels are mandatory.
Date:
A federal district court has rejected South Carolina’s bid to block OSHA from enforcing its long-standing directive for state plans to match federal OSH Act minimum and maximum penalties, including annual inflation adjustments, holding that language in the 2022 adjustment renewing the mandate was not a new action and thus not subject to judicial review.
Date:
The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has again upheld an OSHA workplace violence citation that designated a healthcare facility and its management firm as a “single employer” for purposes of OSH Act enforcement, just as a federal appeals court is weighing its use of that test in a prior case targeting the same management company.
Date:
OSHA plans to “modernize” its long-standing Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) that recognize employers for instituting workplace protections above what regulations and consensus standards require, and is seeking input on a range of possible changes -- from incentives for joining to assessment methods and a potential “tiered” approach.
Date: