Litigation

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.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has set oral argument for early March in a construction firm’s clash with OSHA over the agency’s safety standards for crane assembly and disassembly, teeing up arguments on whether those requirements “clearly” apply to preparatory work as the agency says, and how to read any ambiguity in the rule.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) is saying an administrative law judge (ALJ) was wrong to assume OSHA’s preferred method to abate workplace violence at a Colorado healthcare facility was “feasible” without reports from the company, reinforcing what the panel says is a high bar to make an adverse inference based on lack of financial data.

OSHA is touting its latest in a series of enforcement actions against Dollar General over allegations of widespread unsafe conditions, such as faulty emergency exits at the retailer’s stores, even after the agency agreed to drop a court action designed to enforce what it said was an “informal settlement” stemming from an earlier round of citations.

OSHA is urging a federal appeals court to reject a Texas construction firm’s argument that its safety standards for crane assembly and disassembly do not cover preparatory steps, arguing that the rule is “unambiguous” and that even if its scope is unclear judges should defer to the agency’s reasonable interpretation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit is weighing competing briefs from OSHA and two subsidiaries of the healthcare giant UHS in an appeal testing when the agency can treat legally distinct companies as a “single employer,” as each side claims the other is trying to overturn foundational precedent on that question.

Employer attorneys are highlighting a recent decision by an Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) judge as a rare signal of the agency’s burden to show workers should be considered employees and not contractors under the OSH Act, just as the Labor Department is weighing a new rulemaking to define those categories.

An Ohio firm is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit to hold that Congress violated the Constitution when it directed OSHA to set workplace safety standards as “reasonably necessary or appropriate,” arguing that the OSH Act lacks any “limiting principle” on agency discretion, while also downplaying potential impacts of a future ruling in its favor.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit is weighing OSHA’s leeway to amend claims in its enforcement citations during the administrative appeal process, as an Ohio employer seeks to overturn a citation for a 2018 crane accident where it says a mid-litigation revision deprived it of “fair notice” of the agency’s allegations.

OSHA is touting a recent district court decision allowing a novel whistleblower enforcement suit over COVID-19 infection risks at a New York healthcare center to proceed despite the employee’s agreement not to sue over the alleged retaliation on her own behalf, calling it a “significant” victory for officials’ authority to prosecute similar cases across the country.