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Melanie L. Paul is a principal in the Atlanta, Georgia, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. She is co-leader of the firm’s Workplace Safety and Health practice group. Her practice focuses on occupational safety and health and wage and hour issues. Melanie's clients benefit from her unique inside experience as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) for more than a decade.

OSHA has just announced it is partially reopening the record on the rulemaking for the permanent healthcare COVID-19 standard known as the rule on Occupational Exposure to COVID-19 in Healthcare Settings. Comments are due by April 22, 2022. The docket number is OSHA-2020-0004. Following the written comments, there will also be a hearing held online

With its new inspection initiative, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is taking steps to ensure certain healthcare employers continue to protect workers against COVID-19, even as falling case numbers across the country have prompted many state and local agencies to withdraw mask mandates and other COVID-19 precautions.

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Four separate groups of petitioners challenging the OSHA ETS, including a coalition of 27 states, have asked the court to hear the OSHA challenge en banc, arguing that the case involves a question of exceptional importance in that it is an “unprecedented mandate of COVID-19 vaccines based on a rarely used law of questionable applicability.”