Workplace Violence and Heat Stress - Understanding and Defending General Duty Clause Citations

October 8, 2025         

Two cases before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals could place limits on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) ability to cite employers for failing to prevent workplace violence. Both cases involve psychiatric hospitals where staff reported assaults by patients, and OSHA issued citations under the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act’s “General Duty Clause,” which requires employers to provide workplaces “free from recognized hazards … likely to cause death or serious physical harm.

”The cases, appealed by the hospitals to the Tenth Circuit, are part of a trend of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) affirming General Duty Clause citations in workplace violence cases. Specifically, OSHRC has consistently found that workplace violence is a foreseeable hazard for which there are feasible means of abatement that would materially reduce risk.

Quick Hits

• Two cases before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals could limit OSHA’s ability to cite employers for failing to prevent workplace violence, particularly in psychiatric hospitals where staff have reported patient assaults.

• OSHRC has consistently affirmed General Duty Clause citations in workplace violence cases, contrasting with its rulings in heat-stress cases, where feasible abatement measures were harder to establish.

• Employers are closely watching the Tenth Circuit’s upcoming decisions in cases involving workplace violence cases, which could either uphold OSHRC’s precedent or impose stricter requirements with respect to OSHA’s burden of proof, influencing future workplace safety enforcement.

This stands in contrast to how OSHA has fared in General Duty Clause citations involving heat stress/heat-related illness. In Secretary of Labor v. United States Postal Service, decided in 2023, OSHRC vacated citations, finding that the secretary had failed to establish that feasible and effective means existed to abate the hazard.

In Secretary of Labor v. A.H. Sturgill Roofing Inc., decided in 2019, OSHRC vacated a citation, concluding that simply defining a hazard as “excessive heat” was impermissibly vague to provide sufficient notice to the employer. The lack of a clear hazardous threshold for all workers, given the many variables, such as humidity, wind, workload, personal protective equipment (PPE), and acclimatization, as well as the physical attributes of each employee, made heat a difficult hazard to define under the General Duty Clause. (OSHA does provide guidance on exposure to outdoor and indoor heat-related hazards for employers with temporary workers.)

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