With stories of the Omicron variant permeating the news, it remains to be seen whether this “cause for concern” (in President Joe Biden’s words), might be a new tool for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to use to uphold its Nov. 5 emergency temporary standard (ETS). The ETS requires employers who have at least 100 employees to institute either a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy or a weekly testing and mask-wearing policy for their employees. In the days following the establishment of OSHA’s ETS, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit took the mandate to task, issuing a stay against its enforcement until further court order. Now, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in line to hear the next challenges to the ETS enforcement, a potential watershed legal battle stands in the way of the Biden administration’s efforts to get the United States’ population fully vaccinated to the degree originally anticipated.

For employers and those advising them, questions regarding the fate of OSHA’s vaccination ETS and how to best prepare for any result are sure to take center stage in the coming month. Threshold to both questions, however, are a few historic backdrops: what is an emergency temporary standard?; what legal authority supports its enforcement?; and, how have such mandates faired in the past? The answers to these questions play a pivotal role in understanding and forecasting the future of this ETS.