OSHA Dec. 21 allowed its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare workers to expire, spurring criticism from healthcare and workers’ rights advocates and calls for the agency to “expeditiously” issue a permanent standard to protect frontline medical workers amid a fresh spike in cases from the Omicron variant.
September 16, 2026
OSHA plans to propose this month a rulemaking to withdraw state plan status from Arizona, according to its newly released Unified Agenda for regulatory actions that also targets May for a proposal that would grant partial state plan status to Massachusetts and sets updated timelines for a host of previously announced rulemakings.
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OSHA is pushing back two major deadlines for public input until early 2022 -- extending both the public comment period for its call for comments to inform a long-awaited heat illness standard, and the nomination deadline for new members to its Federal Advisory Council on Occupational Safety and Health (FACOSH).
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OSHA is extending by 45 days the deadline for public comment on its COVID-19 vaccination and testing emergency temporary standard (ETS), as stakeholders await a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit on whether it will lift an injunction blocking the rule’s implementation.
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Washington state is forging ahead with rulemaking based on OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 vaccination and testing despite a court order blocking implementation of the federal rule, as officials there say they “are not delaying” work on their vaccine rule while other delegated states are weighing next steps.
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OSHA is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit to lift a stay blocking its emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 vaccination, teeing up a decision by the appellate court on whether the agency will be able to implement its rule in the coming weeks -- though observers expect the Supreme Court to have the last word.
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A Labor Department (DOL) official told a Nov. 16 advisory panel meeting that OSHA is on track to publish its National Emphasis Program (NEP) for heat danger enforcement by “late March” 2022, ahead of the next round of summer heat and in line with an administration-wide push to combat heat illness.
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A Department of Labor (DOL) attorney says OSHA intends to release new guidance on individual exemptions from vaccine requirements under the agency’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS), though the agency is emphasizing that all work on implementation of the rule is paused due to an appellate court’s order.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has extended indefinitely its stay of OSHA’s COVID-19 vaccine emergency temporary standard (ETS) just days before a multi-court panel is set to consolidate all pending ETS suits before a single court, holding that the rule is “fatally flawed” on statutory grounds and is “likely unconstitutional.”
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Labor unions have filed at least three lawsuits over OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 vaccination, opening proceedings in appellate courts with a Democratic majority among their active judges, ahead of an expected “lottery” to consolidate all ETS litigation in a single circuit.
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