Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told large businesses not to comply with President Biden’s COVID-19 rules on large employers while the nation waits for the Supreme Court to uphold or strike down the regulation.
“They should wait until they get the Supreme Court decision, and of course, that’s an individual business decision,” Mr. Hutchinson, a Republican, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
The GOP-appointed majority of the court seemed skeptical of the breadth of the mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It requires companies with 100 or more workers to figure out who is unvaccinated and then force them to wear masks and submit to weekly testing for the virus.
OSHA has said it won’t begin enforcing the testing portion until Feb. 9, but the other provisions were supposed to take effect Monday.
The governor said businesses should have the flexibility to make their own rules.
Some will “make the decision that they ought to have a vaccine requirement in the workplace, and I support their ability to make that decision,” Mr. Hutchinson told CNN. “There shouldn’t be a ban against that, but others make the decision that it’s not necessary. Maybe they work in a more open environment, or they have a risk of losing too many employees. And so they have that freedom.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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