The fast and furious Jenga game over when and with which federal vaccine mandate a company must comply might finally have reached a turning point. On January 13, 2022, the Supreme Court issued dual per curiam opinions in which it blocked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA’s”) emergency temporary standards (“ETS”), otherwise known as the “vaccine or test” mandate, and lifted the injunction of the vaccine mandate issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”), as further reported on in this client alert. Those decisions may signal an ominous fate for Executive Order 14042 (“EO” or “EO 14042”) and the federal contractor vaccine mandate, which has now shambled past the January 18, 2022 vaccination deadline. Nevertheless, contractors should continue to track developments in all major cases, particularly including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s review of the nationwide preliminary injunction, as well as any case challenging the EO in the Supreme Court. This alert accordingly provides updates on the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force (“Task Force”) FAQs, five major cases in which district courts have issued preliminary injunctions, and key takeaways from the Supreme Court’s recent federal vaccine mandate opinions.
Read more in our client alert.