Delayed or Canceled? OSHA Suspends Biden Vaccine Mandate Enforcement and Implementation

As a result of court rulings, the agency tasked with implementing and enforcing President Biden’s nationwide workplace Covid vaccine mandate has now ceased all effort on the requirement that was set to go into effect on Jan. 4, 2022. With OSHA’s work now indefinitely delayed or halted, it’s possible the entire mandate itself could be scrapped or simply allowed to fall by the wayside before it ever becomes fully implemented.

With the Nov. 12 ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halting the mandate, it appears as though this case will now wind further through the legal system before either side can fully claim victory.

With every passing day, it will become more difficult for Biden to hit an early January start date, and it would appear that any such mandate may be pushed off much later into 2022, if it happens at all:

Following a November 12 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says they have suspended all activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the emergency temporary standard requiring employers with more than 100 employees to require vaccination or COVID-19 testing pending future developments in the litigation.

The ruling by the court ordered that OSHA can take no steps to implement or enforce the emergency temporary standard “until further court order.”

This is good news for employees seeking a medical or religious exemption as it appears they will have more time unless their workplace is implementing its own requirements, as is the case in some instances. When it comes to government enforcement, however, businesses will be off the hook in the interim while Biden’s mandate is litigated.

Aside from the OSHA news, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals was chosen today, at random, to hear the consolidated cases challenging Biden’s vaccine mandate, including the above-mentioned case from the 5th Circuit:

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has won the lottery to hear legal challenges to the Biden administration’s vaccine rule that affects some 84 million workers.

The lottery was announced after multiple lawsuits against the administration were filed in several federal appeals courts. In a process resembling a Powerball drawing, a dozen ping pong balls, each representing one court, were placed into a wooden drum on Tuesday. The winning ball was drawn in Washington, D.C., by a selector from a judicial panel that oversees multidistrict litigation.

It will now be up to the 6th Circuit to decide whether to lift the stay issued by the 5th Circuit. A three-judge panel temporarily blocked the OSHA rule one day after it took effect and reaffirmed that decision last Friday, calling the rule “a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers).”

It’s unclear how the 6th Circuit will rule, of course, but major left-wing media outlets are spending a lot of words describing the court as “conservative-leaning” and filled with several Republican-appointed judges:

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, is known to lean conservative, with most of its judges appointed by Republican presidents. Six were appointed by President Donald Trump and five were appointed by President George W. Bush, while a total of five were appointed by Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The White House, as expected, is urging businesses to ignore the legal proceedings and avoid waiting for the formal OSHA rules to just go ahead and implement a vaccine requirement themselves. So far, those moves have been met with resistance, just ask Southwest Airlines, among others fighting with employees over their vaccination status.