The Pendulum Swings: Early Executive Actions by Trump Portend a Major Contraction at OSHA

February 3, 2025July 10, 2025Eric J. Conn Leave a comment

By Eric J. Conn and Darius Rohani-Shukla

President Trump was sworn in for a second term the morning of January 20^th, and he spent the rest of that day setting a record for the most ever Day 1 executive actions (i.e., Executive Orders, Proclamations, pardons, etc.). Among those Day 1 executive actions (and a couple others that followed later in his first week back in the White House), was a series of Executive Orders (EOs) and directives targeting staffing, budgeting, and rulemaking, which are designed to drastically shrink regulatory and enforcement agencies, like OSHA. These executive actions – including a hiring freeze, budget cuts, return-to-office mandates, buyouts, and reclassification of career positions into political appointments – are part of a systematic strategy to diminish regulatory agencies.

This effort to shrink OSHA and other executive agencies should come as no surprise to anyone. Dismantling the administrative state was a stated goal of the first Trump Administration and again from the campaign trail this time, and that was one campaign promise President Trump delivered on the last go around. By the end of the first Trump Administration, federal OSHA had shrunk to the fewest number of compliance officers in the agency’s history (dropping from 952 compliance officers at the start of the Trump Administration in 2016 to 761 by January 2020), and the agency had a record number of vacancies in “middle management” positions throughout the Area and Regional field offices.

The Biden Administration focused on rebuilding the ranks at OSHA. Biden had a Deputy Assistant Secretary for OSHA sworn in just a couple of hours after himself on Day 1, and then dedicated the next four years to hiring more than a hundred new compliance officers and filling vacancies through the agency. By the end of 2023, the Biden Administration had built the number of OSHA inspectors back up to 878.

Starting on Day 1 of the second Trump Administration, the writing has been on the wall for OSHA that it is about to experience another major contraction. A smaller OSHA means less resources to conduct inspections (OSHA conducted thousands of fewer inspections during the first Trump Administration than during the Obama or Biden Administrations), engage in robust enforcement (the total number of citations and significant enforcement actions decreased during the first Trump Administration), and to work on or promulgate new standards (there was essentially no new rulemaking, other than deregulatory rulemaking, during the first Trump Administration). We predict similar effects on the work of OSHA during this term.

Here is a breakdown of the key Day 1 and Week 1 executive actions that are designed to weaken federal agencies like OSHA: Continue reading →

[Panel Webinar] OSHA COVID-19 Regulation and Enforcement Post-Supreme Court

January 19, 2022July 10, 2025Theresa Jordan Leave a comment

Block your calendars and make sure you join us on Thursday, January 20^th at 3 PM ET for a very special bonus event in Conn Maciel Carey’s 2022 OSHA Webinar Series in the form of a panel webinar program regarding OSHA COVID-19 Regulation and Enforcement After the Supreme Court Stayed the Vaccinate-or-Test ETS.

Presented by
Conn Maciel Carey LLP with Special Guests
Neal Katyal and Jordan Barab

In this exclusive, bonus program we will facilitate a panel discussion regarding the Supreme Court’s recent decision to stay OSHA’s Vaccinate-or-Test emergency temporary standard, what that decision means for employers in fed OSHA and State OSH Plan states, and how OSHA will address the COVID-19 hazard in the workplace moving forward.

We are especially excited to be hosting a remarkable cast of panelists for this event:

Neal Katyal – former Acting Solicitor General of the United States and leading Constitutional Law expert; Partner at Hogan Lovells and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center
Jordan Barab – President Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA and Acting Head of OSHA; former Sr. Policy Advisor to the US House Education and Labor Committee
Moderated by Eric J. Conn, Chair, Conn Maciel Carey LLP’s national OSHA Practice Group

The Supreme Court has spoken, and OSHA’s Vaccination, Testing and Face Coverings Emergency Temporary Standard is once again subject to a nationwide judicial stay. The conservative majority on the Court reasoned that the 50-year old OSH Act does not include an explicit-enough delegation of authority from the US Congress for OSHA to issue a regulation that addresses an issue that is not unique to the workplace and which is of such great economic and social significance. Shortly after the Supreme Court issued its decision, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh announced that “OSHA will do everything in its existing authority to hold businesses accountable for protecting workers, including under the COVID-19 National Emphasis Program and General Duty Clause.”

So, the big question facing employers now is what are the potential regulatory pitfalls from unwinding or stopping the implementation of any of their COVID-19 prevention and/or vaccination policies developed either in response to OSHA’s Vaccinate-or-Test ETS or more general efforts to keep up with CDC recommendations and/or protect against OSHA General Duty Clause citations? Or said another way, without the COVID-19 emergency standards, what does OSHA expect from employers on the COVID-19 front to avoid enforcement?
Continue reading →

CDC Updates Return-to-Work Guidance Again – Reduces Quarantine Time

December 2, 2020August 11, 2025Eric J. Conn 1 Comment

By Conn Maciel Carey’s COVID-19 Task Force

As we noted in a Client Alert last month, the CDC issued its new guidance for “Close Contacts” in a way that would make quarantine circumstances much more likely; i.e., CDC’s new definition of close contact makes it explicit that the 15-minute exposure period (i.e., within 6-feet of an infected individual for 15 minutes) should be assessed based on a cumulative amount of time over 24 hours, rather than just a single, continuous 15-minute interaction.

Creating even more challenges for maintaining adequate staffing, the CDC issued additional guidance in November limiting the flexibility to keep asymptomatic critical infrastructure workers at work after a close contact exposure:

Employers may consider allowing exposed and asymptomatic critical infrastructure workers to continue to work in select instances when it is necessary to preserve the function of critical infrastructure workplaces. This option should be used as a last resort and only in limited circumstances, such as when cessation of operation of a facility may cause serious harm or danger to public health or safety.

Those two changes combined to make staffing a real challenge as we move firmly into the second big wave of COVID-19 cases.

Perhaps because of those challenges, today, the CDC issued new guidance that would reduce the duration of many quarantines from 14 days to 10 days and, in some cases to 7 days. Specifically, CDC identified the following options as acceptable alternatives to a 14-day quarantine:

Quarantine can end after Day 10 without testing and if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring.

If testing is available, then quarantine can end after Day 7 if a respiratory specimen tests negative and no symptoms were reported during daily monitoring. The specimen may be collected and tested within 48 hours before the time of planned quarantine discontinuation (e.g., in anticipation of testing delays), but quarantine cannot be discontinued earlier than after Day 7; i.e., testing should be initiated no earlier than Day 5 after the close contact exposure occurs. Continue reading →

CDC Revises its COVID-19 Return-to-Work Criteria, Again

August 22, 2020August 11, 2025Beeta B. Lashkari Leave a comment

By Conn Maciel Carey’s COVID-19 Task Force

On July 20, 2020, the U.S. Centers Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) made major revisions to its COVID-19 “discontinue home isolation” guidance, upon which employers may rely to determine when it is safe for employees to return to work. This comes only a couple months after CDC made major revisions to the same guidance document when, on May 3, 2020, it extended the home isolation period from 7 to 10 days since symptoms first appeared for the symptom-based strategy in persons with COVID-19 who have symptoms, and from 7 to 10 days after the date of their first positive test for the time-based strategy in asymptomatic persons with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19.

In its most recent update, CDC has determined that a test-based strategy is no longer recommended to determine when to discontinue home isolation, except in certain circumstances. It has also modified its symptom-based strategy in part by changing the number of hours that must pass since last fever without the use of fever-reducing medication from “at least 72 hours” to “at least 24 hours.” CDC’s revisions should trigger employers to immediately revise their COVID-19 preparedness, response, and control plans to account for the latest changes. In light of the recent COVID-19 regulation that Virginia promulgated almost at the same time that CDC decided to update its guidance, the revisions also demonstrate that COVID-19 is not the type of hazard easily subject to a regulatory standard.

Revised Guidance

To start, it is important to understand the major changes that CDC has just made. As you know, prior to CDC’s most recent changes, CDC offered individuals with COVID-19 who had symptoms two options for discontinuing home isolation: