Litigation

With the backing of the Labor Department, major manufacturing and agriculture industry groups are asking a federal judge to resume their stayed litigation challenging OSHA's reporting and recordkeeping rule, with the industry groups signaling that the Trump administration rollback of the Obama-era measure they originally challenged did not go far enough.

The Labor Department (DOL) is asking a federal court to stay litigation brought by state and citizen groups challenging OSHA's bid to delay provisions of the Obama-era recordkeeping rule for 2017 until after the court resolves the groups' separate challenge to the Trump administration's measure rolling back the rule's requirements.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in a new dissent claims there is “mounting criticism” of the Chevron principle that gives primacy to OSHA and other agencies’ interpretations of unclear laws, raising the stakes for pending cases that could give the court’s strengthened conservative majority an opening to narrow or scrap the doctrine.

In a precedent-setting decision, OSHA’s review commission has, for the first time, upheld the agency's use of General Duty Clause authority to address a fatal workplace violence incident, but the commission's chair, in a concurrent opinion, strongly urged the agency to promulgate a workplace violence standard, underscoring lawmakers' calls.

In a split decision, OSHA's review commission has reversed an agency citation issued under its General Duty Clause authority that sought to penalize a construction company whose employee died from heat stress, a ruling that labor advocates say raises the bar for such cases and shows the need for OSHA to develop a heat stress prevention standard.

The Justice Department (DOJ) is asking the Supreme Court to retain a limited form of judicial deference for OSHA and other agencies’ interpretations of their rules rather than scrapping the doctrine altogether as conservatives, industry groups and others have urged, warning that deference is needed to ensure “certainty and stability” for nationwide rules.

The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and environmental groups are suing to compel the Trump administration to finalize EPA’s Obama-era proposed ban on use of methylene chloride in paint strippers, claiming that the June 2016 revised toxics law requires the agency to protect workers from unreasonable risks.

A federal district judge is ordering the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) to issue within one year a final rule requiring chemical facilities to report their accidental releases, backing health and public interest groups’ claims that CSB has unreasonably delayed the rule that could inform worker protections and is mandated by law.

The Supreme Court is facing calls to end its long-standing precedent deferring to OSHA and other agencies' interpretations of their own rules, with a critic's opening legal brief urging the justices to scrap the “egregiously wrong” precedent because it allows regulators to change rules on a whim without notice-and-comment rulemaking.

The Labor Department (DOL) is appealing an administrative law judge's (ALJ) decision voiding an OSHA citation against a security company for not requiring its armed guards to wear bulletproof vests, arguing in part that OSHA's 2014 policy expanding application of its personal protective equipment (PPE) standard to include bulletproof vests was applicable in this case.