The Biden administration’s proposed OSHA Heat Standard was always a solution in search of a problem, a sweeping federal mandate that would bury employers in red tape while doing little to improve workplace safety. Last week, Congress took a meaningful step toward stopping it for good.
On July 21, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce passed H.R. 6213, the Heat Workforce Standards Act. The bill would prohibit OSHA from finalizing the Biden-era heat standard or any substantially similar rule. A companion measure, S. 4427, sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is pending before the Senate HELP Committee. Together, they represent a bipartisan recognition that Washington bureaucrats shouldn’t be micromanaging how every employer in America manages temperature in the workplace.
The OSHA compliance burden landed the same way regardless of where a business operated. The Biden OSHA heat standard, proposed in August 2024, required a written heat plan, a designated rest area, an acclimatization schedule for anyone new on the job, and this was required in the same manner to a roofing crew in Tucson as it would to an accounting firm with a warehouse annex in Ohio. The paperwork requirements didn’t take into account varied climate or industry.
The heat risk on an Arizona construction project is not the same as on a Minnesota farm. A rule written to cover both fits neither.
Here’s what gets left out when supporters of the rule call this bill an attack on worker safety: OSHA already requires employers to protect against heat. That’s the General Duty Clause, and it’s been on the books covering recognized workplace hazards since long before the Biden rule arose. In addition, there is a patchwork of state-level heat rules already in place in states like California and Washington. It is clear that there is not a regulatory vacuum waiting to be filled. We already have a system with real teeth.
As the National Federation of Independent Businesses put it:
“Small businesses go to great lengths to ensure the safety of their employees, and a federal Heat Standard would only add unnecessary regulatory requirements that could force them to close or sell off to a larger competitor.”
A citrus grove in central Florida and a steel plant outside Pittsburgh do not share a risk profile, a workforce, or a climate. The Biden administration’s rule was built on precisely that assumption: enforcing a single, uniform standard without any consideration for the specific realities of individual job sites. Congress voted to reject that premise last week, and it was the right call. H.R. 6213 deserves passage in the House. Cassidy’s companion bill deserves a vote out of the Senate HELP Committee. And employers, most of whom already have heat safety plans built around their own conditions, deserve to keep running things that way.
Subscribe to Pinpoint Policy Institute