Skip to main content

Breaking: Sixth Circuit Lifts Stay of Vaccine Mandate For Large Employers


Talk about late breaking news for a Friday:  A three judge panel from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a temporary stay that had previously been in place that prevented a test or vaccine mandate for employers with at least 100 employees from being enforced.

Readers will recall that the President Joe Biden instructed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue a mandate that required every large scale private employer have each of its employees either get the coronavirus vaccine or submit to weekly testing.  However, after lawsuits were filed to contest this mandate, the Sixth Circuit eventually got the consolidated cases and issued a temporary stay in November that kept this mandate from going into effect.  However, the three judge panel’s decision today noted that the alleged injuries claimed by the claimants was “entirely speculative” and the costs of delaying implementing the mandate were high.  (Not to mention the Court gave a nod to the Omicron variant and the potential risks associated with that variant spreading across the country.  As the Court noted, requiring vaccines is paramount to stopping the spread of this variant.)

Some might be wondering, what now?  For starters, these large scale employers will be required to either have all their employers receive the coronavirus vaccine or submit to weekly testing by January 4th.  For those employees that are not vaccinated, they will be required to wear masks in the workplace.  (That particular requirement was set to take effect December 6th.  Today’s ruling does not clarify when that mask requirement will be enforced.)

Of course, I think this matter will eventually wind up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.  The only question is when?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more