On the heels of a court decision last week, OSHA has put on hold the Biden administration's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for U.S. employers with 100 employees or more.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a motion to stay OSHA's COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard. The court ruled OSHA should not take any steps towards implementing or enforcing the ETS until a future court order.
OSHA released a statement saying, "while OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation."
The mandate would require employers with 100 employees or more to staff fully vaccinated workers. If an employee wasn't vaccinated, that employee would need to be tested regularly for COVID. Companies that violated the mandate would face hefty fines in the tens, or event hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The full mandate was set to go into effect on January 4, 2022.
The Biden Administration is confident the OSHA mandate is necessary, even though the President said over the summer the Federal Government was not in a position to require Americans to get vaccinated.