Public Citizen and other health groups are preparing to file a motion asking a federal judge to quickly order the Trump OSHA to require employers to submit detailed 2017 worker injury and illness reports as required by a now-delayed Obama-era rule after the judge rejected agency efforts to dismiss the case and upheld the groups' standing to sue.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that seeks to overturn the 21-year-old precedent that requires judges to defer to OSHA and other agencies on the meaning of their regulations -- a precedent at the center of many court rulings addressing agency rules but one that many of the court's conservatives have openly criticized for years.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is backing OSHA's policy that allows the agency to cite “controlling employers” for hazards to other employers' workers on a job site, backing, for the first time in this appellate circuit, the use of Chevron deference to uphold OSHA's OSH Act authority to address multi-employer sites.
OSHA continues to bolster its oversight of industrial facilities through inspections under a 2017 National Emphasis Program (NEP) and data-sharing with EPA enforcement officials, despite the agency's decision to shelve a planned strengthening of its process safety management (PSM) rule, according to industry attorneys.
OSHA has sent for White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review a proposed rule seeking to revise an Obama-era rule strengthening the agency's beryllium standards, changes that are part of a settlement with industry groups that calls for clarifying ancillary provisions of the Obama-era rule's general industry standard.
Public Citizen is urging a federal court to preserve its suit challenging the Trump administration's suspension of OSHA's Obama-era injury and illness reporting rule, charging that the agency's motion to dismiss wrongly claims it lacks standing and that the court lacks jurisdiction.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is faulting the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board's (CSB) spending on legal fees in a dispute with the board's former managing director, saying that CSB's continued focus on the on the matter distracts from its mission of investigating facility accidents.
Labor and environmental groups challenging the Trump administration's rules for reviewing existing chemicals' risks to workers and the environment under the revised toxics law are rejecting EPA assertions that the law grants the agency broad discretion to determine the chemical uses it considers for possible regulation, charging that EPA must consider all conditions of use.
OSHA is urging a district court to “disregard” recent claims from Public Citizen that it is able to detect companies that do not report worker injuries, part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit seeking the reports, arguing that the plaintiff misunderstood a recent agency statement on how it targeted enforcement against possible reporting violators.
OSHA and industry petitioners are requesting that a federal appellate court continue to hold in abeyance an industry lawsuit challenging an Obama-era update to the agency's beryllium standards to allow the Trump administration to complete a planned rule rolling back aspects of the standard in accordance with a settlement deal reached this spring.