Professor James Brudney shared his expert opinion with MarketWatch on mask guidelines in the workplace and how employers can make their own guidelines.
New federal public health guidelines are clearing the way for fully-vaccinated Americans to clear that mask right off their face and inch back to normalcy.
Just don’t confuse that for a no-mask free pass at the store or on the job.
A day after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to say people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can ditch masks in most cases and “resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic” experts noted there are limits to what CDC guidance allows, and some companies said their mask rules for employees and customers will stay the same for now.
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Workplaces can continue to write their own mask rules in most instances. “These are guidelines and employers have been able to require masks before,” said Professor James Brudney, an employment law expert at Fordham University School of Law. Without a governor’s prohibition or state law voiding requirements, there’s nothing stopping employers from setting the ground rules on conduct on their premises, he said.
Of course, employers can try to impose all sorts of rules that wouldn’t hold up in court. “But this isn’t that,” he said. Company rules relating to masks during a pandemic boil down to worker and consumer safety, he said.
For Brudney, the next new question is “whether employers are authorized to verify which employees are vaccinated and therefore don’t require masks.”
