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.
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.
The long-delayed challenge to OSHA’s Trump-era rollback of electronic recordkeeping mandates is set to move forward after a federal appeals court lifted its long-standing stay on the suit, backing safety advocates’ argument that the Biden administration’s repeated delays of a rule to reinstate the requirements undermine the rationale for pausing the case.
Health and work-safety groups that sued over OSHA’s Trump-era rollback of electronic recordkeeping mandates are pressing to resume their suit after the Biden administration moved its target for finalizing a new, stricter rule from March to June, saying the agency’s “pattern of reneging on its agreements” means litigation is the only sure path to resolve their claims.
Employers and labor-aligned groups are renewing their longstanding arguments on the merits of OSHA’s expanded electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates in response to the Biden administration’s proposal to generally unwind a Trump-era rollback of those requirements, with unions again welcoming the rule while industry calls it unnecessary or dangerous.
OSHA is giving stakeholders an extra 30 days, until June 30, to file comments on its proposal to reinstate Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates for workplace injury and illness data, following requests from employers and unions alike for more time to consider and respond to the plan.
OSHA is starting a new enforcement initiative targeting employers who have failed to submit annual “Form 300A” summaries of their annual injury and illness data through the agency’s online disclosure tool, just as it is proposing to reestablish broad electronic reporting requirements that would expand the mandate to also cover records of individual incidents.
OSHA is formally proposing to revive Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates for employers’ injury and illness data, arguing that the Trump administration’s rollback of that rule in the name of worker privacy is no longer needed because “recent advancements in technology” will allow it to scrub public disclosures of any identifying details.
Public health groups are asking a federal appeals court to resume their lawsuit over OSHA’s 2019 rollback of Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates, after the agency failed to propose restoring the rule by the end of 2021 as it promised in an earlier filing -- though it now says the proposal will arrive by mid-February.
OSHA plans to propose this month a rulemaking to withdraw state plan status from Arizona, according to its newly released Unified Agenda for regulatory actions that also targets May for a proposal that would grant partial state plan status to Massachusetts and sets updated timelines for a host of previously announced rulemakings.