On Thursday, January 13, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court satisfied anxious employers and attorneys by issuing opinions on two of the Biden Administration’s controversial vaccine mandates. In King Solomon-esque fashion, the Court divided the cases evenly by allowing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (“CMS”) vaccine mandate to proceed but staying enforcement of the OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”) applicable to businesses with 100 or more employees.

Despite data confirming that the newer Omicron variant of COVID-19 is transmissible even to those who are double vaccinated and boosted, recent federal resuscitated President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.

On Friday, December 17, 2021, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the national stay of the OSHA ETS issued by the Fifth Circuit (https://ohaganmeyer.wpengine.com/2021/12/02/president-bidens-vaccine-mandates-put-on-hold/), finding that the potential harm COVID-19 poses to the Government and the public interest “outweighs any irreparable injury to the individual petitioners who may be subject to the vaccination policy.”

On Wednesday, December 15, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit scaled back the reach of the preliminary injunction against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (“CMS”) COVID-19 vaccination mandate (“Mandate”) that a Louisiana federal district court issued two weeks earlier.  This CMS Mandate is the rule requiring that healthcare workers who work in health care settings that receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by January 4, 2022, or face termination.

On December 7, 2021, U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden Administration, preventing any further acts to enforce Executive Order 14042 (“EO 14042” or “Mandate”) and the associated Safer Federal Workforce Task Force Guidance, the Executive Order requiring most workers on federal contracts to be vaccinated, pending further action from the Court. The case, Georgia v. Biden, was brought by the states of Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia (the “States”), along with several state agencies and is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

On November 30, 2021, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana placed a nationwide preliminary injunction on the enforcement and implementation of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (“CMS”) COVID-19 vaccination mandate applicable to healthcare workers (“CMS Vaccine Mandate” or “Mandate”).

President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates are being attacked on multiple fronts and have suffered significant setbacks in the past two weeks.  Courts in multiple jurisdictions have issued preliminary injunctions halting vaccine mandates that the Biden Administration has imposed on private employers, health care workers, and government contractors.

The DuPage County Car Association is hosting Hot Topics in Employment Law: The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic, a webinar presented by Chicago associate Jenee Gaskin and Yolanda Carrillo from the Illinois Department of Labor Thursday, February 18th at 12pm CST.

Charles G. Meyer III and Amanda J. Muehlhausen will speak at ATSSA’s 51st Annual Convention & Traffic Expo on the increasing movement of states to legalize marijuana and decriminalize other controlled substances, employers face increasing liability from employment-related claims in the workplace.

With the recent approval of COVID-19 vaccines and anticipated rollout of inoculations nationwide, employers have begun to ask for guidance regarding whether they can compel employees to receive the vaccinations. On December 16, 2020, the EEOC released guidance confirming that employers may require their employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19 before returning to work.