What are a business&#39;s obligations now that the Biden (OSHA) administration has suspended enforcement of its business vaccination mandate(s)? The Biden administration has suspended enforcement of its vaccination and testing requirements for private businesses after a federal appeals court halted the rules pending review. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in a statement on its website, said the agency “has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement” of the requirements “pending further developments in the litigation.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, considered one of the most conservative in the country, ordered OSHA last week to “take no steps to implement or enforce the Mandate until further court order.” Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, in an opinion for the three-judge panel, called the Biden policy “fatally flawed” and “staggeringly overbroad,” arguing that it likely exceeds the authority of the federal government and raises “serious constitutional concerns.” Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/biden-administration-suspends-enforcement-of-business-vaccine-mandate.html Thousands of private and public companies across the USA have mandated a strict vaccination policy, and threatened employees they will get fired if they will not comply. For example: CNN fired 3 employees for coming to the office unvaccinated. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58112125 26,000 NYC employees were placed on administrative leave without pay, and potentially will be fired if will not be vaccinated: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579257-26k-nyc-workers-remain-unvaccinated-after-friday-deadline The CEO of ChristianaCare in Delaware said the hospital has terminated approximately 150 employees who did not adhere to its vaccination policy. It employs more than 12,000 workers. Northwell, New York's largest health care provider, recently dismissed about 24 unvaccinated employees. Northwell employs 76,000 workers. Novant Health, a hospital system based in North Carolina, has fired more than 175 unvaccinated employees. More than 99 percent of its 35,000 employees have complied with the company's vaccine mandate. Last week, Novant suspended 375 workers, giving them five days to get at least a first shot, which 200 did—suggesting that suspensions can work. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/pages/coronavirus-firing-unvaccinated-workers.aspx And many more. These business are not covered under the HIPAA umbrella to maintain the medical records of their employees with the HIPAA guidelines. And these businesses have no legal way to verify the vaccination record/proof of their employees. So essentially it is a &quot;trust me&quot; system. I was under the assumption that the businesses were relying on the OSHA vaccination requirements that Biden created. With that requirement being off the table, and potentially being considered as unconstitutional - how will that affect the legal requirement of businesses requiring a vaccination proof?
Not at all. A US business always had the authority to require employees to be vaccinated before entering the workplace, except if a valid state law prohibits this. The EEOC has confirmed that none of the Federal laws which it enforces prevent such a requirement. The proposed mandate under the OSHA Act would merely have required a business subject to the mandate to do what it had the right to do anyway. Even if it is held that the US Federal Government does not have constitutional authority to impose such a mandate, that would not in any way impair any business which chooses to do so from imposing such a requirement on its employees, subject to the requirements under the ADA and the Civil Rights act to offer reasonable accommodations for sincere religious objections, and for disabilities that would interfere with accepting vaccination. Businesses generally are not &quot;covered entities&quot; under HIPPA, and so can ask employees for health information such as a vaccination record, if they choose to. Or they can choose to trust an employee's word on the matter.
In the US, the most wide-spread proscription against a medical treatment (broadly construed) is that only 10 of 50 states allow physician-assisted suicide. In Washington v. Glucksberg (one of the states that subsequently made such suicides legal), SCOTUS affirms that such a law does not violate the Due Process Clause. Given a historical analysis, the court concludes that an &quot;asserted 'right' to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause&quot;. O'Connor in her concurring opinion further states that &quot;There is no dispute that dying patients in Washington and New York can obtain palliative care, even when doing so would hasten their deaths&quot;, but this falls short of a ruling that a person has a protected liberty interest in seeking medical care. Cruzan v. Director affirms that &quot;[a] competent person has a liberty interest under the Due Process Clause in refusing unwanted medical treatment&quot; (also noting that &quot;informed consent&quot; may derive from common law or specific state constitutions). Reciting prior reasoning on Due Process and medical treatment and referring to Jacobson v. Massachusetts (smallpox case), they note that &quot;the Court balanced an individual's liberty interest in declining an unwanted smallpox vaccine against the State's interest in preventing disease&quot;. There seems to be a dearth of cases affirming a protected liberty interest in seeking a particular medical procedure. Were the court to announce a fundamental right to seek some medical treatment, that right could still be subordinated to the states compelling interest in preventing some harm associated with a medical procedure, with legal review being carried out under a strict scrutiny standard. It should be borne in mind that Congress does limit access to drugs and devices, hence there is no constitutionally-protected right to take LSD as a treatment for mental problems. To the extent that a procedure relies on a (not-yet approved) device, that device must be approved by the FDA.
Since this is a board about law, the legal answer is that New Jersey does not regulate vacation pay: In New Jersey, employers are not required to provide employees with vacation benefits, either paid or unpaid. If an employer chooses to provide these benefits, it is only required to comply with its established policy or employment contract. The specific law cited by that web page is this one, which says that &quot;Nothing in this chapter requires an employer to pay an employee for hours the employee is not required to be at his or her place of work because of holidays, vacation, lunch hours, illness and similar reasons.&quot; So whether your boss can count weekend days as part of your vacation will depend on your employment contract and the established policies of your employer. Unfortunately, that's not something this forum can provide advice on.
The authority for the ban is laid out here: all that is required is putting the company on the Commerce Department's entity list. More specifically, under 50 USC 1701 there must be an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat If that condition is satisfied (and it has been: we have the emergency), then 50 USC 1702 grants POTUS broad economic powers, including prohibiting transactions in foreign exchange, or any kind of transaction involving any right regarding any property. Under that order, one implementational step for putting a company on the list is an executive review involving the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary), in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Trade Representative, the Director of National Intelligence, the Administrator of General Services, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and, as appropriate, the heads of other executive departments and agencies There must be a determination that the transaction involves information and communications technology or services designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied, by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary and that the transaction &quot;is a threat&quot;. This last requirement is the tallest hurdle that a Twitter-ban would face, namely establishing that Twitter is controlled by a foreign adversary.
A company can mandate getting a flu shot as a condition of employment. The government can do the same (for its employees) – Washington state has done so at least for covid. Some individuals qualify for a disability accommodation, so they would be exceptions (e.g. they could be moved to working away from the public). A sincere religious conviction also gives rise to a religious-accommodation exemption. This guidance addresses the question of what constitutes a sincerely held religious belief.
It's probably not unlawful to ask, but an answer cannot be required immediately. Per the Department of Labor, Susan has 60 days to elect COBRA coverage (the qualifying event here being the termination of Susan's employment): Your plan must give you at least 60 days to choose whether or not to elect COBRA coverage, beginning from the date the election notice is provided or the date you would otherwise lose coverage under your group health plan due to the qualifying event, whichever is later. It would be unlikely for an employer to discourage an employee from electing COBRA coverage due to costs to the employer, as you suggest: Susan is still employed and thus could be treated differently in her last two weeks depending on how she responds because the company is struggling financially and is looking for every opportunity to save money. Susan electing to use COBRA coverage is unlikely to cost the company money, because the employer is permitted to charge her the entire cost of the coverage, plus 2 percent to cover the cost of administering it (additional DoL source). As far as privacy goes, I don't think anything illegal has occurred here. The most prevalent law regarding privacy of health information, HIPAA, generally does not apply to employers. Susan could, of course, request a private discussion, and any response from Emily could not rise to the level of illegal harassment or create a hostile work environment.
&quot;This policy&quot; is referring to the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines as amended (basically a Terms of Service (TOS) agreement). If so, does it mean adherence to Guidlines is fixed to version current at the moment of commencement of employment? Not really. It means that Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines are primarily guidelines for members of the general public who are not employees, and that different unstated policies delivered to employees are what govern employees instead. There are consequences for Mozilla employees failing to honor the current version of the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines, but those consequences are set forth in an employment contract with the employees rather than being limited to the consequences and procedures set forth in the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines for members of the general public who aren't employees.
Some interesting reasoning about standing aside (which antivaxxers etc. will love though, because it stipulates that the FDA refusing to collect all side effects statistics [even starting 16 years later] gives standing to sue on the original approval), the Texas' judge estimation of success on the merits is essentially relying on the finding that &quot;Pregnancy is not an illness&quot; (p. 40) and essentially repeated on p. 44 as &quot;Chemical Abortion Drugs do not provide a Meaningful Therapeutic Benefit&quot;, so that in the Judge's estimation drugs for terminating pregnancy can be held to a [much] higher safety standard than the FDA decided by itself. This ultimately phrased as (p. 57): The Court does not second-guess FDA's decision-making lightly. But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns in violation of its statutory duty based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions. It's followed by another finding that there was likely political interference by the Clinton administration with the FDA's decision. This a rather partial summary since the order involves several FDA decisions, the details of which which I'm glossing over here (like the fact that the decision to not collect all side effects stats for mifepristone is rather more recent, being taken in 2016--but nonetheless the judge found that consequently the original 2000 decision was reopened as well, and can the object of the suit too.)