Workforce Bulletin

On the evening of Wednesday, December 22, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that it will hold a special session on January 7, 2022, to hear oral argument in cases concerning whether two Biden administration vaccine mandates should be stayed. One is an interim final rule promulgated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”); the other is an Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”) issued by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”).  The CMS interim final rule, presently stayed in 24 states, would require COVID-19 vaccination for staff employed at Medicare and Medicaid certified providers and suppliers. The OSHA ETS, which requires businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure that workers are vaccinated against the coronavirus or otherwise to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing, was allowed to take effect when a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, to which the consolidated challenges had been assigned by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, issued a ruling on December 17, 2021, lifting a stay that had been previously entered by the Fifth Circuit. Multiple private sector litigants and states immediately challenged the decision.

As we previously reported, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) was signed into law on March 11, 2021, requiring, among other things, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to issue its implementing regulations by July 9, 2021. As promised, PBGC issued an interim final rule, 86 Fed. Reg. 36598 (July 12, 2021) (the IFR), on a major element of the rescue plan―the Special Financial Assistance Program (SFA)―intended to provide a one-time payment to the estimated 200 most financially troubled multiemployer pension plans to help them survive and pay pensions through ...