On December 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit removed the stay on the OSHA COVID-19 vaccine-or-testing emergency temporary standard (ETS). The court’s decision to remove the stay has been appealed to the Supreme Court. The litigation of the ETS is far from over and AGC remains engaged, having filed its Construction Advocacy Fund-backed lawsuit in November.
As a result of this decision, OSHA will begin to implement and enforce the ETS in 2022. Specifically:
- OSHA will not issue citations for noncompliance with any requirements of the OSHA ETS before January 10, 2022; and
- OSHA will not issue citations for noncompliance with testing requirements before February 9, 2022.
These extensions, however, are conditioned on an employer exercising reasonable, good faith efforts to come into compliance. In an effort to assist AGC members with increasing the vaccination rates among their workforce and to comply with the ETS requirements, the association created a vaccine tool kit webpage that contains a construction-oriented summary of the ETS detailing employers’ compliance options and obligations as well as additional resources.