HFTP Blog
January 14, 2022

U.S. Supreme Court Rules on OSHA's New Vaccination/Testing Rule

Blog
Written by Brad Steele, J.D. — Contributor

This week, the Supreme Court reinstated the stay on the new OSHA Vaccination/Testing Rule. As such, clubs no longer have to enforce the requirements that went into effect January 10 (like establishing your club’s vaccination or testing policy, determining your employees’ vaccination status, mandating masks for those unvaccinated, providing PTO for employees to get vaccinated, etc.) or the testing mandate due to go into effect on February 9.

While this is good news, the Court’s decision does not end the OSHA Rule problem. With this ruling, the Supreme Court simply said that OSHA cannot enforce the Rule until a final decision can be made on the Rule’s legality by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. In other words, the Court told OSHA to wait until the actual case is decided before moving forward.

The next step is for the 6th Circuit to hold the trial on whether OSHA overstepped its bounds in creating this Rule. When that decision is handed down, you can expect it to be appealed by the losing side.

Ultimately, I do believe we have a better idea of whether this Rule will actually be enforced, but until the final decision is rendered by the Supreme Court we will have to wait and see. At least we all have more time to prepare – one way or the other.

As you and your team deal with this issue, please reach out to me if you have questions on specific employee exemptions, implementation issues or anything else. There is a lot to unpack here and I am happy to help.

Brad Steele, J.D. has 15 years of experience in the private club industry and is founder of Private Club Consultants (PCC), which provides in-depth legal and operational answers for private clubs in America.

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