OSHA is promising to exercise “discretion in enforcement” if employers are unable to comply with various testing, training, inspection and other safety mandates due to the COVID-19 pandemic, writing in a new memo that there will be no penalties for those violations as long as businesses make “good faith” attempts to comply.
September 17, 2026
A federal judge has ordered a first-time citizen suit under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to proceed in a virtual bench trial later this year due to the coronavirus pandemic despite objections from the plaintiffs who had won the right to a de novo proceeding where they will be able to present new evidence to the court.
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OSHA, former Vice President Joe Biden and worker advocates are floating separate efforts to protect delivery workers from the threat of coronavirus, including new “tips” from OSHA to protect such workers and Biden calling for new agency policies to better protect delivery workers in addition to health care employees.
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Former Obama OSHA officials, House Democrats and others who have criticized the Trump administration for not issuing a temporary emergency standard to protect health care workers from the coronavirus pandemic are welcoming OSHA’s interim response plan to reduce such risks, but they are renewing calls for the agency to set a binding standard.
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EPA has formally rejected environmentalists’ calls to take immediate emergency actions on three chemicals that the agency has found pose acute risks in its draft risk evaluations, arguing in part it would be “premature” to act before EPA works through the evaluation and management process laid out in section 6 of the revised toxic law.
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A panel of three appellate judges is grappling with what remedy they could give OSHA if they side with the agency in a suit challenging a finding by OSHA’s independent review panel that raised the bar for citing companies for “repeat” workplace safety rule violations, as well as trying to resolve whether the lawsuit is moot.
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OSHA is aiming to ease healthcare workers’ access to respirators during the coronavirus pandemic by issuing two memos offering enforcement discretion of its respiratory protection standard for employers who must otherwise use NIOSH-approved respirators or devices from other countries.
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EPA’s science advisors are raising concerns over the narrow scope of the agency’s draft evaluation of asbestos, prompting changes to the charge questions they will consider when they assess the draft during a peer review meeting later this month so they can formally discuss their concerns.
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The Obama-era head of OSHA is calling for the agency to quickly issue an emergency infectious disease standard and cite employers who “egregiously” ignore Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance on airborne diseases in order to protect health and other works from the coronavirus.
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The Supreme Court’s June 2019 decision curtailing judicial deference to agencies’ regulatory interpretations could make OSHA efforts to reverse prior policies through new guidance vulnerable to court challenges because judges interpret it as bolstering limits on imposing an “unfair surprise” to stakeholders, attorneys say.
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A key House Democrat and an asbestos awareness group are stepping up efforts to advance stalled bipartisan legislation seeking to ban asbestos, arguing EPA’s recently released draft evaluation of the minerals under the revised toxics law is too narrowly focused and ignores multiple aspects of asbestos risk as well an appellate court ruling.
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A federal district judge says in a new order that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) appears to have “engaged in arbitrary decision-making” by not addressing worker safety concerns in its rule revising swine slaughterhouse line speeds, allowing worker advocates to proceed with their challenge to the policy.
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EPA is urging a federal appeals court to reject environmentalists’ request to stay litigation challenging its rollback of Obama-era chemical disaster safety mandates as the agency weighs their reconsideration petitions, arguing a stay runs counter to the Clean Air Act (CAA) even if petitions for rule reconsideration are pending.
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As they seek to stall legal challenges, critics of EPA’s rule rolling back Obama-era chemical disaster safety mandates are urging the agency to reconsider the measure, arguing in administrative petitions that officials “cherry pick[ed]” new data, ignored significant continuing chemical accidents and relied on new rationales.
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EPA is moving ahead with a planned scientific review of its just-released draft evaluation of asbestos, which found the substance poses unreasonable risk to workers, consumers and others, despite calls from science advisors and other critics who had urged the agency to delay the review until after the coronavirus pandemic.
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Top House Democrats say they will include a mandate that OSHA issue an emergency temporary infectious disease standard to address risks from the coronavirus to healthcare employees and expand protections in other industries in their next bill to address the pandemic after they were forced to drop the mandate from prior measures.
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Construction and contracting firms are urging OSHA to soften its guidance on how the sector should record workplace absences due to COVID-19 during the current pandemic, warning that the current requirement to determine if an infection is “work-related” will put employers “in an almost impossible position.”
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EPA’s draft evaluation of trichloroethylene (TCE) is driving new calls from its science advisors and a top former OSHA official to strengthen its analyses of occupational exposures to chemicals in the first 10 evaluations, suggesting the agency more fully address protections beyond personal protective equipment (PPE).
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The Senate’s massive $2 trillion emergency bill to address fallout from the coronavirus pandemic provides billions of dollars to increase supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers, but does not mandate an OSHA emergency standard for the workers that House Democrats are seeking.
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State attorneys general (AGs) and employment lawyers are opposing the White House Office of Management & Budget’s (OMB) call for input on potentially tightening due process protections in civil enforcement actions at OSHA and elsewhere, arguing that there is no rational or legal basis for any such reforms.
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