MEDIA ADVISORY: “Tremendous Amount at Stake” with January 7 SCOTUS Special Session on Biden Vaccine Mandates, Says Employment Litigator

David Gordon of Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp available to discuss impact of this week’s oral arguments

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As the United States Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments this Friday challenging President Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine requirements for large employers and federally funded health care workers, national employment litigator David Gordon cautions it could be an “administrative nightmare” if the mandates at stake are upheld.

The SCOTUS special session comes on the heels of the newly-effective New York City vaccination requirement – and giant employers like Starbucks announcing its workers must be fully vaccinated or undergo weekly testing to comply with new federal mandates. At their core, the legal cases being argued against the federal mandates challenge whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had the statutory authority to adopt the rules they proposed.

“There’s a tremendous amount at stake for employers with more than 100 employees if the OSHA rule is upheld,” said David Gordon, an employment litigation partner at law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP. “On a practical level, big employers will need to ensure they have a mechanism in place for verifying compliance.”

“They’ll also need to go to great lengths to disentangle vaccine information from other personal health information and monitor the testing of employees who are unvaccinated,” adds Gordon. “It’s truly an administrative nightmare that large employers will need to tackle quickly, given the pending federal mandates and surge in Covid-19 cases across the country.”

If the OSHA requirements are upheld, it is estimated they could affect more than 80 million workers, while the CMS requirement for health care workers could affect more than 10 million.

David Gordon is available for interviews about the potential implications of the vaccine mandates discussed during the SCOTUS oral arguments.

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