Litigation

The Supreme Court has adopted a new, stringent standard for regulatory agencies to justify sending enforcement actions to administrative law judges (ALJs) for review rather than federal courts, but the majority appears to hold up the OSH Act as an example of a law that passes its test, signaling that OSHA could avoid major impacts from the precedent.

The industry coalition suing EPA over its controversial update to the risk management program (RMP) says it will ask a federal appellate court to scrap four aspects of the rule in particular -- those that mandate third-party audits, “safer technology” analyses, public transparency, and adoption of new “generally accepted” engineering practices.

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.