Federal Contractor Mandate On Hold Nationwide

As previously announced on September 9, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14042 - Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors. This Order requires executive departments and agencies to contractually obligate federal contractors to comply with workplace safety standards that were being developed by the Federal Workforce Task Force. Essentially, these new standards would direct all covered contractor employees working on or in connection with the covered federal contracts and all other employees that share workplaces with such employees to be fully vaccinated unless they qualify for a legal exemption. The order defines "fully vaccinated" as two weeks after receiving the second dose in a two-dose series, or two weeks after receiving a single-dose vaccine. Initially, the deadline for the vaccine mandate was December 8, 2021, but that deadline was extended to January 18, 2022. This means that covered contractors would need to receive their single-dose vaccine or the second dose of a two-dose vaccine by January 4 to be in compliance by the final deadline.

UPDATE:

• On Tuesday, December 7, 2021, a federal judge in Georgia blocked the Biden Administration from enforcing its vaccine mandate for all federal contractors across the county.
• The Justice Department is likely to appeal this latest decision and request the courts allow the mandate to move forward.
• These cases filed will likely take time to settle and court decisions could be made after the initial deadlines announced by the Biden Administration.
• There are likely many entities across the country that have already begun to implement aspects of the original mandate to stay on track for compliance. These activities likely include the development of specific programs, policies & procedures, entity-specific rules, personnel decisions based on vaccination status, processing requests for exemptions, etc.

Gallagher is not in a position to dictate your business decisions; however, we advise clients to follow the most up-to-date information and include sources such as the Federal Government, retained or in-house legal counsel, and their individual state Departments of Public Health. This is a constantly evolving situation and we recommend that clients continue to utilize their administrative processes to decide what is best for their organizations.

Additional Resources:

As states and other governmental authorities lift the restrictions imposed around the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are starting to prepare for reopening. The decision to reopen is a complex issue. We cannot advise you whether you should or should not reopen your business. If you decide to do so, we have generated this information for your review and consideration. It includes some high-level ideas that you may want to consider as you move through the process of opening your business. This generalized information does not take into account all of the unique and specific issues that may be involved in opening your business. If you have questions about this information or your insurance coverages, please contact your Gallagher representative.

Disclaimer

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