President Biden’s COVID-19 Vaccine Executive Orders

On September 9, 2021, President Biden announced his COVID-19 Action Plan entitled “Path Out of the Pandemic,” which included a pair of Executive Orders (EOs).  The EOs require that all federal employees and contractors must be vaccinated against COVID-19 and the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will be issuing an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) requiring that private employers with 100 or more employees are vaccinated (Please see attached summary prepared by the Small Business Legislative Council (SBLC), where Mike Oscar serves as treasurer and ASA is a member, for more information regarding these EOs.)

In the interim, OSHA must craft this ETS, and mandating vaccinations as a threshold for workplace safety and health poses the biggest regulatory challenge in decades for OSHA since its creation in 1970. The agency is primed for lawsuits and OSHA has lost five out of the six times such temporary rules landed in court. Stay tuned for more information as this ETS unfolds in the coming weeks.