Unions and a worker-protection group are signaling that their suit over EPA’s rule setting out requirements for chemical risk evaluations will target a single provision allowing the agency to consider data on companies’ use of protective equipment in its reviews -- a narrow focus despite the rule’s broad swath of policy changes.
Six national and regional trade associations are suing the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) over its landmark rule tightening exposure standards for silica dust, with one of the petitioners vowing to target what its top official says was the final measure’s inclusion of several elements never mentioned in a 2023 proposal.
A federal judicial panel has chosen the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review EPA’s redone “framework” rule governing TSCA risk evaluations of existing chemicals -- a victory for labor groups that sought to challenge it there, and a loss for industry groups that favored the conservative 5th Circuit instead.
President Joe Biden is nominating a longtime labor and trade official to one of the two vacant seats on the Occupational Safety and Health Association Review Commission (OSHRC), after the Senate’s inaction on a prior nominee has left the panel with just a single active member, and thus unable to decide cases, for over a year.
A slew of prominent associations representing employers and industry sectors has sued OSHA over its controversial “third-party” worker walkaround rule, incorporating arguments voiced by a range of trade groups and attorneys that the rule exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority, violates several federal laws and poses a threat to workplace security.
Worksafe, a California-based employee-advocacy group that often weighs in on workplace safety issues, has filed what appears to be the first formal lawsuit over EPA’s final overhaul of the TSCA “framework” for risk evaluations of existing chemicals, underlining the focus unions and worker advocates are placing on the agency’s chemical-safety program.
The United Steelworkers (USW) is signaling that it will seek to formally defend elements of EPA’s TSCA chrysotile asbestos rule that industry groups are seeking to loosen or overturn, in one of the first substantive moves of what could be a precedent-setting legal battle over the landmark regulation.
OSHA and an Ohio contracting firm are sparring over whether the Supreme Court should let stand an appellate ruling that upheld OSH Act provisions empowering the agency to craft safety standards under the nondelegation doctrine, including a new test the employer is floating that would block Congress from giving agencies discretion to address “major questions” in rulemaking.
A coalition of Republican officials from 14 states has formally challenged EPA’s controversial update to the risk management program (RMP), signaling that they will argue the new rule’s mandate for facilities to assess and adopt “safer” technologies carries no clear benefits that would justify its compliance costs.
The federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is sending litigation over the Biden administration’s landmark TSCA rule phasing out uses of chrysotile asbestos to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit -- the same court that overturned the agency’s first attempt to ban asbestos more than 30 years ago when it drastically narrowed EPA’s authority to regulate existing chemicals.