It is the American way: lawsuits filed fast and furiously all over the country. In this case (or rather cases), OSHA (and the CMS) issued its Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) mandatory vaccine rules for employers with 100 or more employees. (If you missed that bombshell, it’s summarized here). Then the lawsuits asking for injunctive or quick relief from the tight deadlines came the next day.
Now what? How will the timing work?
There is a process to review OSHA’s standards that consolidates the lawsuits nationwide to one circuit court in the country. All ETS related lawsuits will transfer their proceedings to the randomly designated circuit court. The transfer must occur within 10 days from when the court is chosen by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Time wise, it appears that the designated court will get the cases on November 16, 2021–three weeks before any vaccination mandates and seven weeks before any mandatory testing.*
What should employers do? Stay the course. Waiting for the chosen circuit court to decide puts employers very close or maybe even past the deadlines. We have fixed fee solutions that will cost you little in time and implementation: the OSHA ETS Compliance Package and for healthcare, our CMS ETS Healthcare Compliance Package.
We can help make this a lot easier. Contact us at 508.548.4888 or email Mike Foley.
*Shout out to Philadelphia attorney Eric B. Meyer for deciphering this. It is crazy.