Justice Department Solicitor General
Elizabeth Prelogar at Friday’s Supreme Court hearing said that “employers need to be adopting their policies, they need to be ascertaining the vaccination status of their employees, and as of Jan. 10, they need to be requiring masking for any employees who remain unvaccinated.”
The mandate to exclude from workplaces employees who aren’t fully vaccinated or haven’t passed a weekly Covid-19 will “kick in” Feb. 9, Prelogar added.
Federal OSHA allows the governments of 26 states—including California—Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to adopt and enforce their own workplace safety and health rules for private-industry or state and local government workers, provided their safety measures are at least as good as those prescribed by the federal agency. Those governments have until Jan. 24 to adopt a standard and until late February to begin enforcement.