April: Legality of OSHA Safety Rules Challenged in Federal Appeals Case

[mahatmakanejeeves]

April 27, 2023, 5:24 AM

Legality of OSHA Safety Rules Challenged in Federal Appeals Case

Bruce Rolfsen
Reporter

-- Congress delegated OSHA too much power, employer says
-- Agency defends safety rules as needed, feasible
-- A federal court hearing Thursday could determine whether hundreds of OSHA workplace safety requirements are illegal.

At issue during oral arguments at the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is whether when Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, it delegated too much authority to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to decide which safety dangers needed to be regulated and what the protections should be. ... If judges with the Sixth Circuit rule against OSHA, the decision could strike down safety regulations covering hazards from falls to electrocution dating back 50 years.

Allstates Refractory Contractors LLC of Waterville, Ohio, wants the court to overturn the rules. ... “When it comes to workplace-safety standards, the only purported limit on that broad rulemaking authority in the Occupational Safety and Health Act is that these rules must be ‘reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment and places of employment,’” attorneys for Allstates from the firm Jones Day wrote in a brief to the court. ... “That is no limit at all. Congress offered no guidance on what makes a rule ‘reasonably necessary or appropriate.’ Instead, it left that weighty policy question entirely to the agency.”

Allstates didn’t challenge OSHA health rules, since the US Supreme Court in earlier decisions had approved, within limits, OSHA’s power to create health standards.

Jones Day partner Brett Shumate, who served as a Trump administration politically appointed deputy assistant attorney general, is expected to present Allstates’ case. Shumate didn’t respond to a request to discuss the case.

{snip}

[Karadeniz]

1. Who would want to make it difficult to keep people safe?

[ret5hd]

2. Those that would make more money by...

having an occasional cave in at a construction site bury a few workers

rather than

provide adequate shoring and stabilizing.

In other words: employers.

[Karadeniz]

3. You're right....

[PSPS]

4. David Booth and Brett Shumate, that's who.

Jones Day partner Brett Shumate, who served as a Trump administration politically appointed deputy assistant attorney general, is expected to present Allstates’ case.

[Chainfire]

5. Do you want to protect the workers or the profits?

Without OSHA, I may well have not made it to retirement. Employers are willing to risk employees health and safety if it saves them money.

[nature-lover]

6. Personal protective equipment, air monitors, fall protection etc. are expensive.

OSHA rules require a variety of process-specific plans and equipment. It is the employer's responsibility to provide it. This costs $$$. Thus, the push back. Keeping employees safe should be viewed as a cost of doing business. Unfortunately, many businesses look at it as an unnecessary expense - until the accident.

[3Hotdogs]

7. Before O.S.H.A., there were 70K worker deaths per year. After O.S.H.A., worker deaths, 2021, 5,190.

It was long about 15 years ago, there was a documentary on PBS about Koch Industries and the large number of O.S.H.A. violations fines they accumulated and (as I recall) refused to pay. A couple of years after the violations, PBS revisited and found them to have remediated the conditions that led to the violations.


Needless, to say, doing it right, can cost money. Other times, it is just about changing behavior.


My takeaway from the O.S.H.A. course I took: "If it looks stupid, it is."

[peppertree]

8. But none of that matters to GOP judgstitutes.

They're paid to rule by fiat, to the sole benefit of their check-writers - and by tarnations they'll do it.

[Farmer-Rick]

9. I'm sure 65,000 dead workers don't bother the boughten

and paid for judges on the Supremes. Like seeing women die due to stupid religious based forced birth laws doesn't bother them any. In fact I suspect it's a plus for them. Sadists and psychopaths have to have an outlet too you know?

[peppertree]

10. +1

You just described today's Repugs in a nutshell.

They don't just want to do well (who doesn't) - they get off on the idea that others suffer in the meantime.