OSHA loses their battle to redefine “retail” in the PSM Standard (1910.119)

Friday morning (9/23/16) the United States Court of Appeals, For the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT announced that OSHA could not redefine “retail” using a Letter of Interpretation (LOI) or Memorandum, OSHA would have to go through the Notice of Public Rule Making (NPRM) in order to redefine the term.  Ironically, it was a 1995 LOI that actually defined “retail” and yet no lawsuit was brought forth on that LOI and it stood for 20+ years.  The court even acknowledges that the “retail” exemption was to be applied to “small containers” and true retail businesses; but in the end, the court sided with the complainants (AGRICULTURAL RETAILERS ASSOCIATION and the FERTILIZER INSTITUTE) and said the Memorandum was essentially a standard.  Here is the cleaned up version of the decision, the actual decision can be downloaded

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