U.S. Employers face patchwork of state policies on worker vaccination after Supreme Court order

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Fri, 2022-01-14 10:03 — mike kraft

Employers face patchwork of state policies on worker vaccination after Supreme Court order U.S. companies were divided in their response to the ruling. Washington Post

The Supreme Court’s decision that large companies do not have to force workers to get coronavirus shots or tests leaves employers facing a patchwork of clashing state policies over their role in protecting their workforces from the surging pandemic.

The court order Thursday lands on the polarized American landscape just three days after employers with at least 100 workers — apart from the relatively few that already required vaccines or testing — put into effect vaccine verification and other aspects of the rule. That was two months after it was announced by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The about-face affects 84 million employees, more than half the U.S. labor force, although with about 63 percent of the U.S. population fully vaccinated, many workers are already immunized

The decision by the court’s conservative majority was a relief for some firms that had regarded the federal rule as overreaching and burdensome. Complying with the requirements “would have been infeasible in some respects and onerous in others,” said Eric Hobbs, a lawyer at Ogletree Deakins, who added that many of the companies with which the firm works will be glad to be unfettered from the federal edict.

Other employers said that, with an ideologically divided workforce, they were disappointed to be deprived of a convenient justification for requiring coronavirus shots or weekly tests. ...

For the Labor Department, the rule — technically, an emergency temporary standard, to be followed by a permanent version after the end of public comments — was one of the most high-profile public policy moves in decades. Thursday’s order does not permanently kill the rule. Instead, the justices blocked it while they consider litigation against OSHA’s requirement.

Still, employers, workplace safety advocates, lawyers and labor specialists construed the justices’ preliminary decision as predicting the final outcome.

At the same time, the high court allowed the Department of Health and Human Services to continue another federal rule that requires coronavirus vaccines of workers at health-care settings that treat patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid. That rule affects an estimated 10 million employees — fewer than the 17 million the Biden administration had said at first.

One of the main consequences of the court’s decision will be on businesses that operate in more than one state.

“Having this decided at the state or local level … really does make this very messy, and there will be less people who are protected at work,” said Lorraine Martin, president of the National Safety Council, which strongly favors the OSHA rule. ...

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