Judge Denies Employers' Objections to CalOSHA's COVID-19 Standard

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman denied the injunctions against Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 standard. In the 2 cases Schulman held the plaintiffs were not likely to win their cases on the merits, and that the interest leans more in favor of curbing the spread of the disease. The judge is reluctant to second-guess the CalOSHA on its rulemaking.

The 2 cases were brought by the National Retail Federation, the National Federation of Independent Business and several employers, and by Western Growers Association, California Farm Bureau Federation and several other organizations. They argued that the General Industry Safety Orders §3205 were in violation of several California State Acts as well as the US Constitution:

• The Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide sufficient facts to demonstrate the existence of an emergency. and the need for immediate action.
• The Occupational Safety and Health Act by overstepping its jurisdiction in regulating wages or sick leave.
• The California Constitution by requiring employers to send to quarantine at home potentially exposed employees and pay the “potentially ruinous costs” of paying employees their full salaries while they are at home in quarantine.
• The Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment by denying employers “any meaningful opportunity” to weigh in on the proposed regulations.

The Ag-industry lawsuit included these requests, along with the added request to be exempted from complying with the Safety standard requiring detailed actions to prevent COVID in AG provided employee housing, and the company vehicles used to transport groups of employes to worksites.

Judge Schulman's order denied the injunction by the AG industry suit, and denied the "Plaintiff’s application in its entirety,” on the Retail case. Schulman further stated, “Plaintiffs have not shown a likelihood of prevailing on the merits of their claims. Even if they could do so, the balance of interim harms and the public interest in curbing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting worker and public health weigh heavily in favor of the continued implementation and enforcement of the ETS regulations.”

Digested from CalOSHA Reporter

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