Professor James Brudney was quoted in an article by Fortune Magazine, where he discussed the recent blocking of federal vaccine mandates.
Over the weekend, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked new vaccine mandates and testing regulations put in place by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Yet as the legal challenges play out, experts say most employers should start to put protocols in place rather than wait.
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Ultimately the Supreme Court is probably going to have to decide this and that’s probably not going to happen before Dec. 5. when the first set of requirements kick in, says Jim Brudney, a professor of labor and employment law at Fordham Law School.
Even with the legal uncertainty, Brudney says he expects there will be a “fair amount of activity” among companies working to comply with the new regulation. “For those employers who had no interest in doing this or feel pressured not to do it by other circumstances, they may wait. But, the detail and nuance of the regulation creates a set of sort of sequenced steps that employers can take, and I would expect that many of them will take those steps, even as the litigation is winding its way to the Supreme Court,” Brudney says.
That’s because there are real public health and economic risks at play. “The more immediate risk is that if you don’t do the things that OSHA has concluded are necessary to address this emergency, do you risk some serious potential problems with your workforce?” Brudney says.