On January 13th, 2022 the Supreme Court blocked the Covid vaccine mandate for large employers, which was intended to begin enforcement on February 9th.

Original post: 10/1/21

Unlike President Biden’s Executive Order for federal contractors and health workers, all private sector large employers with 100 or more employees will need to implement optional weekly Covid testing.

Although not yet in effect, we are expecting the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to publish an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) within the next two to eight weeks. Such ruling will require large employers to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work. The ETS is expected to impact over 80 million workers in the private sector.

It is not yet clear as to who counts towards the 100 employee threshold, or whether employers will be required to pay for testing. We also do not know how long employers will be given to meet compliance requirements, but will be required to provide employees paid time off for vaccination. The mandate will not apply to fully remote workers who are never onsite, and it is yet to be determined how such a policy will be enforced with penalties of up to $14,000 per violation.