The legal battle running up to Friday's historic oral arguments about pandemic-related requirements for employers included a friend-of-the-court brief signed off on by Mark Williams, public health dean at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Williams was among a group of 30 deans from various universities to argue in court documents against "a central premise" in legal challenges to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration emergency temporary standard requiring large employers to enforce a covid-19 vaccination policy.
The group -- also joined by several organizations, including the Association of American Medical Colleges -- stated in their court filing that "overwhelming public-health and scientific consensus contradicts" the premise that covid-19 "poses no particularized risk to workers and workplaces."
The filing, dated Nov. 30, argued that OSHA's "vaccinate-or-test standard also reflects the most recent public-health evidence and research on the dangers that the virus poses to the workplace and the efficacy of vaccines against COVID-19's spread."
At the time of the filing, a stay had been issued preventing the enforcement of the OSHA emergency temporary standard.
The group asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dissolve the stay, and the federal appellate court did so last month.
Williams joined UAMS in 2019 after working at Florida International University, where he had served as an associate dean and interim dean of the university's Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work.
Covid-19 vaccine mandates have been restricted by state lawmakers in Arkansas, and state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge in November joined with attorneys general in other states to challenge the OSHA mandate.
Leslie Taylor, a UAMS spokeswoman, said the university had no comment on the OSHA covid-19 vaccine requirement.
"We do agree that vaccines are not harmful and have been shown to be beneficial in preventing severe disease," Taylor said in an email.