As all three federal COVID-19 vaccination authorization rules have been shelved in court, employers are in trouble.

Before the court injunction, Health system, Federal Contractor with Employers with 100 or more employees It is obligated to make regulations for its employees before January 4th. Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations allow employers to also set up weekly testing programs for unvaccinated employees. Two other federal rules prohibit the testing part.

But the finality of these rules has changed, and judges in several states have suspended the implementation of these rules until they are classified in legal venues. On November 29, a U.S. District Court judge in Missouri issued a preliminary injunction against the emergency authorization rules of the Medicare and Medicaid Services Center.

“(The) CMS authorization raises substantive legal and factual issues that must be determined,” the judge wrote. “Because it is clear that CMS has greatly underestimated the burden that its responsibilities will place on the ability of medical institutions to provide adequate care, thereby saving lives, the public is interested in maintaining the’status quo’ and the case is confirmed.”

The judge made a similar ruling on the emergency provisions of federal contractors and companies with more than 100 employees.

But experts in Southeast Michigan urge companies to prepare for implementation in response to whether or when these rules are passed through the constitution.

“These legal disputes may continue until 2022,” Courtney Nichols, labor and employment practice partner and co-head of the Plunkett Cooney PC law firm in Bloomfield Hills (Courtney Nichols) Say. “But we are still advising customers to ensure that they continue to collect data and information about their workforce demographics. They need to know how many employees are vaccinated or unvaccinated, and identify sectors with higher unvaccinated rates. This is very The important thing is that if these tasks are reviewed, the framework of what obligations they might assume is very important.”

CMS, federal contractors, and OSHA regulations require companies to record and maintain the vaccination status of employees so that federal agencies can review them when needed. For OSHA rules that allow testing, companies can pass on the cost of testing to employees.

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Nichols said that it is not clear when the court will resolve the issue, but may make a decision next month, and the implementation time will be postponed from January 4 to February or March.

Many companies may celebrate legal interference with authorization rules. According to survey data generated by consulting firm Willis Towers Watson in November and provided to Crain’s, there are 229,000 employees in Michigan, 87% of whom do not intend to require employees to be vaccinated.

Of these interviewees, 92% are either very worried or a little worried that vaccine enforcement will cause employees to flee their organization-although it is not clear where employees will go because federal regulations cover most employers.

While 3% of the respondents did plan to make vaccination mandatory regardless of federal regulations, more than half of the respondents believed that on the contrary, mandatory vaccination would increase recruitment and retention rates.

However, in the Willis Tower Watson survey in Michigan, 90% of respondents said they plan to adopt a testing strategy for unvaccinated employees.

Detroit Honigman LLP partner and co-chair of wages and working hours business Matthew Disbrow said that legal barriers and the introduction of vaccination rules once again made employers confused about how to proceed.

“As was the case throughout the pandemic, employers have been busy with the things they should do related to employee protection. This is even more true,” Disbro said.

However, many companies are working to determine the vaccination status of their employees and whether these employees can be exempted from any mandatory measures taking effect.

As Crain reported last month, Many companies may accept reasonable religious exemptions to circumvent the rules.

According to federal law, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Chapter 7 of the Civil Rights Act, and other federal laws that prohibit compulsory vaccination for medical or religious reasons, employers must provide reasonable accommodations for employees who are exempt from compulsory immunization.

Employers may tend to simply accept any and all requests for religious exemptions — some denominations of the Dutch Reformed Church maintain an anti-vaccine stance — or requests for medical exemptions, such as severe but very rare allergies to vaccine ingredients.

The rules require organizations to keep records explaining why an exemption is granted for potential investigations. But federal regulators simply don’t have the resources to investigate most employers’ violations of the waivers. Nonetheless, Nichols warned that if the legal process is authorized, the exemption needs to withstand scrutiny.

“The company must ask itself, if these exemptions are reviewed three to six months from now, what will they look like,” Nichols said. “Can they reasonably assert that these exemptions conform to the spirit and intent of the rules?”

At the same time, Disbrow urged employers to “prepare” for potential tasks and “continue planning.”

This story first appeared in our sister publication, Crane’s Detroit business.