Today the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) officially withdrew its "emergency" vaccinate-or-test mandate for private employers, acknowledging that the Supreme Court's January 13 stay blocking the rule's enforcement means it has no realistic chance of surviving judicial review. At the same time, OSHA said it may yet seek to impose a similar mandate through the usual rule-making process.
That is quite unlikely to happen, both because of the time that process requires and because of the Supreme Court's reasoning in granting the stay. Given these realities, any talk of turning the rescinded "emergency temporary standard" (ETS) into a permanent rule should be viewed as little more than a bureaucratic face-saving gesture.
