Public-health groups are renewing litigation seeking to revive OSHA’s Obama-era electronic reporting rule even as a final rule expected to reinstate many or all of its requirements is awaiting White House approval, arguing that a federal court should scrap the 2018 rollback of those mandates immediately as their absence is causing ongoing harm.
September 17, 2026
OSHA is seeking stakeholder feedback on “leading indicators” that can help workers and regulatory identify potential hazards before an injury or other incident, such as low workplace training rates or infrequent equipment maintenance, as it prepares to develop a resource for tracking those factors.
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Industry attorneys are questioning OSHA’s plan to soon issue an interim final rule (IFR) that the agency says will provide “clarity” on its use of subpoenas but which one attorney says may include major changes to the process without a notice and comment period.
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OSHA is urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to uphold a trench-safety citation over violations that a Texas contracting firm claims were the result of “unpreventable employee misconduct,” arguing that the employer has failed to show it uses effective safety monitoring or enforcement and thus should be barred from invoking that defense.
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An employer-focused attorney says OSHA’s recent enforcement action against Amazon over a failure to provide “adequate medical treatment” to warehouse workers signals that the agency could more broadly use medical management of workplace injuries as a way around its lack of a formal standard on workplace ergonomics.
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EPA has submitted its proposed TSCA carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), teeing up renewed battles over industry groups’ bids to exempt “critical uses” of the solvent from restrictions, as well as arguments that the Trump-era risk evaluation used a deeply flawed approach to model workplace exposures.
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Groups representing employers, industries, labor unions and worker-safety advocates are gearing up for what are expected to be highly contentious deliberations by California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) on its proposed first-time worker-safety rules for heat illness prevention at indoor worksites -- an effort that could also help shape standards at the federal level.
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OSHA is touting a recent district court decision that found the United States Postal Service (USPS) unlawfully retaliated against a worker for reporting an on-the-job injury, but the ruling also rejected -- for now -- the agency’s bid for an order that would require USPS to strengthen its whistleblower protections nationwide.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is set to consider how strictly OSHA can apply its fall-protection standard in a construction company’s appeal of an enforcement case that has so far focused on how workers should apply the rule’s mandate to wear protective gear when crossing a height difference over 2 feet.
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Unions representing workers at poultry slaughterhouses have voluntarily dropped their long-pending suit against the Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the safety impacts of line speed waivers for the sector, apparently in response to the beginning of a new Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) trial that replaced the Trump-era program they challenged.
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OSHA has unveiled its latest warehouse-safety citation against Amazon, this time alleging that the retail giant failed to provide “adequate medical treatment” for employees with traumatic and chronic injuries at a fulfillment facility in Castleton, NY -- which the agency says is just one of 20 open investigations into the firm’s workplaces.
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OSHA is beginning a new enforcement national emphasis program (NEP) aimed at preventing on-the-job falls -- which the agency notes is the leading cause of fatal workplace accidents -- and improving compliance with the fall protection standard.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit has found that OSHA properly treated two subsidiaries of Universal Health Services (UHS) as a “single employer” in a citation for workplace violence at a Massachusetts facility, rejecting the firm’s claim that doing so would render the test “near-boundless” -- but also classifying its decision as non-precedential.
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A National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) working group crafting advice for OSHA’s long-awaited heat-danger standard appears set to recommend that the rule avoid tying protections to specific temperatures and instead account for variability in working conditions and geographic areas.
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California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board is divided over a pending proposal to substantially strengthen worker-safety rules for lead exposure in the construction sector and general industry, with several members agreeing with employers that the draft standard should be slowed and scaled back and others arguing it is far overdue.
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A three-judge appellate panel appears skeptical of an Ohio contractor’s constitutional challenge to OSHA’s safety standard program, suggesting during recent oral arguments that the petitioner have a high bar to clear and questioning whether the case was intended only to challenge Supreme Court precedent on the so-called non-delegation doctrine.
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The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could reverse -- or at least narrow -- the longstanding Chevron doctrine, which grants OSHA and other federal agencies discretion to reasonably interpret ambiguous statutory language.
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The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is preparing to ask the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to renew its expiring information collection request (ICR) that allows industrial facilities to notify the board in the event of an “accidental release” that could be subject to investigation and prompt advice to EPA and OSHA on how to prevent such incidents.
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The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is urging EPA to tighten its risk management program (RMP) to account for “reactive hazards” and extreme weather events driven by climate change, reiterating a swath of prior recommendations in its new report on a Gulf Coast chemical spill set off by 2020’s Hurricane Laura.
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A scientist at EPA’s TSCA office says the agency’s collection of data on worker safety and chemical exposures differs in scope and purpose from industrial hygienists and employers’ methods, offering more insight into the program’s assessment process just as it is floating its first set of workplace safety standards in a newly proposed rule for methylene chloride.
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