Here Is OSHA's Brief -- On Why The Fifth Circuit "Stay" Must End. It Is Persuasive.

Over the weekend, we said this Fifth Circuit stay would soon end. And it will.

Here's the full 28 pages of why that is so. The arm-flailing hysterics of the presently-indicted Texas State AG notwithstanding, long-settled black letter federal law [under the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 at Section 6(c)(1)] has authorized workplace-disease mitigation measures to be a comprehensive federal scheme, under OSHA's aegis. So long as the means are rationally related to legitimate ends (as here, plainly on overwhelming scientific evidence), as envisioned by the Congress, the measure will go into effect.

It is simple, really: OSHA is charged with protecting worker saftey, on a nationwide basis. OSHA has made a determination, based on a deeply reasonable scientific analysis -- that pursuant to a Congressional standards-limited grant of authority. . . even the Supremes will be duty bound to respect. [This is not Tangerine attacking TikTok.] This is worker safety -- the middle of the Constitutional and statutory fairway -- an ongoing pandemic -- a once in a century acute risk event. The Fifth Circuit's Tangerine appointee will see this stay dissolved, perhaps before mid-November. And in any event, the mandate doesn't take full effect until January 2022. Read it for yourself:

. . .The idea that workplace hazards include diseases that exist outside of the workplace is hardly novel. OSHA has required precautions for bloodborne pathogens, which can be contracted outside the workplace, and has long imposed workplace sanitation and fire rules, even though such concerns are not workplace-specific. E.g., Pmbl.-61407-08. Indeed, as exemplified by famous outbreaks of tuberculosis and smallpox in factories, workplace dangers have long been understood to include the dangers of contracting communicable diseases as a result of being in close proximity to other employees. See also, e.g., Danovaro-Holliday et al., A Large Rubella Outbreak with Spread from the Workplace to the Community, 284 JAMA 2733, 2739 (2000) (documenting Rubella spread in meatpacking plants). . . .

[T]his Court need not consider delegation or deference issues here because the statutory text is unambiguous and limited to addressing grave dangers to employees in the workplace. Like many other areas of regulation, workplace-safety regulations may affect many Americans and may touch on issues about which some people disagree. But that does not automatically compel a circumscribed interpretation of a deliberately broad congressional grant. . . .

This will all be over shortly, in favor of sanity -- and science, Condor confidently predicts tonight. Now you know.

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