Litigation

Amazon is touting a California state court ruling that dismissed a worker’s claims that the online retailer has adopted unlawfully lax workplace COVID-19 protections in a bid to fight a similar suit in federal court, arguing that federal judges should follow the same logic and defer to OSHA’s enforcement and rulemaking discretion.

Several recent administrative law judge (ALJ) rulings scrapping OSHA citations against the Postal Service (USPS) for exposing mail carriers to excessive heat could end the agency’s longstanding reliance on a National Weather Service (NWS) guide for determining the severity of heat exposures.

OSHA is touting a new decision from an administrative law judge (ALJ) that held a New York flooring maker liable for falsely claiming to have corrected a series of prior workplace violations, calling it a marker for the importance of addressing identified safety hazards following an enforcement action.

OSHA is asking a federal district court to reject a lawsuit that seeks to mandate enforcement action against a Pennsylvania meat-packing plant over fears about inadequate worker protections against COVID-19, arguing that the workers have not met the OSH Act’s “high bar” to override regulators’ enforcement discretion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has rejected the AFL-CIO’s bid for rehearing in its suit aiming to force OSHA to craft a COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS), shifting focus from the case back to Congress’ negotiations over potentially mandating a virus standard in the next pandemic response bill.

Labor unions and the group Public Citizen are asking a federal district court to scrap the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) program that allows poultry slaughterhouses to raise their line speeds above regulatory maximums, saying it violates a 2014 rule for the sector that the Trump administration never withdrew or amended.

Democrats and Republicans are taking hard lines on the employer liability waiver in the GOP’s newly unveiled COVID-19 relief bill, posing the risk of a stalemate on the next virus economic relief bill as Democrats say the waiver is a “non-starter” while the GOP counters that it must be included in the legislation.

Workers at a Pennsylvania meat-packing plant are suing OSHA for what they say is the agency’s unlawful failure to respond to complaints of “imminent” danger of COVID-19 infection at the facility, arguing that the OSH Act gives the agency no choice but to quickly inspect the facility or to formally reject the complaint as unwarranted.

A federal district judge is refusing a request from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to halt litigation over its rule allowing higher line speeds at swine slaughterhouses so the agency can reconsider the policy, backing unions who have argued that the rule jeopardizes worker safety and should be scrapped entirely.

OSHA is citing a health care company over inadequate worker protections for COVID-19 at odds with requirements in its existing respiratory protection standards, in what appears to be the agency’s first major enforcement action against an employer for not implementing sufficient protections against the virus.