What a Friday trifecta! The only thing better that could come in threes would be a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream — with chocolate instead of strawberry and vanilla. Beards up! Masks down. Speaking of threes, the Philadelphia 76ers have been flashing championship form since the arrival of James Harden…
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced revisions to its COVID-19 face mask protocol. What’s new? Most people are either vaccinated or possess natural immunity from COVID infections. Therefore, the risk of medically significant disease, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19 is far less for most people.…
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this blistering (albeit, PG-rated) 58-page dissent to yesterday’s non-precedential Fifth Circuit decision, in which the majority concluded that a private company’s workplace vaccine mandate could irreparably harm individuals with disabilities and strong religious beliefs. So, orgies, eh? That’s nothing. Check out…
I really wanted to blog about the policemen who got fired for catching Pokémon rather than criminals. But, sigh, I’ll save that for a future blog post. Instead, I’ll share some scoop from Eleanor Mueller at Politico, who reports here that three separate sources have confirmed that the White House…
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced yesterday that it has decided to withdraw the vaccination and testing emergency temporary standard issued on Nov. 5, 2021, covering large employers with 100 or more employees. The withdrawal is effective today. But check the fine print. Although OSHA…
WTH is even left to enjoin anyway? Oh, right, the September 2021 Executive Order 14043 requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for federal workers. As of last Friday, Executive Order 14043 is stayed nationwide — thanks to a Texas federal judge. You can read a copy of his opinion here. Or skip it,…
And some of the largest companies are leading it. But let’s rewind first to last month when the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals greenlit OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). That’s when things got very real for employers that had put off implementing the mandatory vaccine-or-test requirements. It wasn’t long after…
According to the Associated Press (here) and the BBC (here), Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the end of COVID-19 “Plan B.” England will no longer require face masks in public places or COVID-19 passports for large events. The government is also no longer advising people to work from home anymore.…
One word explains why the Supreme Court allowed the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to require the staff of twenty-one types of Medicare and Medicaid healthcare providers to be fully vaccinated (the “CMS Mandate“), while it stayed the OSHA vaccine-or-test mandate. That word is knockwurst “Congress.” OSHA could not issue its…
As fast and mercurial as HR compliance has been in the age of COVID-19, we hit hyperdrive in the past few months. The headliner was the OSHA vaccine-or-test mandate that surfaced in November, only to be stayed, then unstayed, and then stayed again at the Supreme Court last week. The…