On Sept. 9, President Joe Biden announced his administration’s Path out of the Pandemic action plan, a six-pronged national strategy aimed to combat COVID-19 while keeping schools and workplaces open and safe. One prong of the plan involves vaccinating those who are not yet vaccinated. To achieve this goal, the president took actions that have since been on the minds of most employers and human resources professionals: he issued an executive order requiring contractors who do business with the federal government to mandate vaccinations for their employees; he directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to develop a rule requiring employers with 100 or more employees to ensure that their employees are either fully vaccinated or tested weekly; and he ordered the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to require vaccinations for most health care workers.

As of this writing in early November, the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force has released detailed guidance related to the federal contractor order. Although OSHA just released an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to implement the mandate for large employers on Nov. 4, (the ETS has been enjoined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and a petition for preliminary injunction is being heard this week) and CMS has not yet issued an interim final rule related to health care workers. As a result, employers across the country are waiting for important guidance and details about how vaccine mandates will impact their employees. Complicating matters further, at least 12 states have commenced litigation against the Biden administration in at least three different federal district courts (Arizona, Missouri and Florida) over the federal contractor rule, and several states (Texas, Florida, Arizona and Alabama) have issued executive orders of their own opposing vaccine mandates.

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