The Ramifications of Court’s OSHA Mental Health Ruling

The Fifth Circuit’s finding that OSHA lacked congressional authorization to regulate mental health in the workplace doesn’t change workers’ compensation law directly, but it may strengthen employer arguments for denying mental health claims and could push states to revisit how they define compensable work-related injuries.
Workers’ compensation mental health claims generally fall into three categories: physical-mental claims (a physical injury leading to a mental condition like depression or PTSD), mental-physical claims (a work stressor causing a physical condition like a heart attack), and mental-mental claims (a mental condition like PTSD caused by a work event, such as witnessing violence, with no accompanying physical injury).
Regardless of category, these claims typically require a valid diagnosis from a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist (self-diagnosis isn’t sufficient), an expert opinion causally linking the work event or stressor to the diagnosis, and demonstrable legal damages.
Because compensability is ultimately bounded by how each state defines a work-related injury rather than by OSHA’s authority, the ruling may prompt state agencies to reexamine those definitions, potentially triggering new legislative activity.

The Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed a Workers’ Compensation Commission decision finding that a test proctor at North Arkansas College, is entitled to additional medical treatment, including ankle surgery, after her January 2022 workplace fall aggravated a preexisting ankle condition.
The worker had undergone ankle surgery in 2020 and recovered enough to return to work before her 2022 fall, after which she experienced significant worsening of her symptoms and was ultimately diagnosed by her treating physician with “posttraumatic arthritis” tied to the injury.
North Arkansas College leaned heavily on the opinion of the who had performed the worker’s 2020 surgery and opined that none of her MRI findings were related to the 2022 injury and that she’d reached maximum medical improvement with zero permanent impairment.
The Commission gave that opinion only minimal weight after post-injury imaging revealed a new split tear of the peroneal brevis tendon not present in earlier scans.
The court held that under Arkansas law, a claimant need not prove the compensable injury was the “major cause” of the need for treatment — only that it was “a factor” — and found the Commission properly weighed conflicting medical evidence.

The Utah Supreme Court reversed a court of appeals ruling, holding that Darden Restaurant, an Olive Garden franchisee, waived its limitations defense against an employee’s workers’ compensation claim after failing to ask an administrative law judge to dismiss the claim for lack of timely notice — even though it had pleaded the defense and introduced supporting evidence.
The worker, a manager, slipped and injured his shoulder and neck in July 2020 but did not formally report the injury to the employer within the 180-day window required by Utah law. At the hearing, Darden instead argued the lack of a report showed the injury never happened, rather than seeking dismissal on timeliness grounds.
The administrative law judge dismissed both claims based on the notice issue, and while the Commissioner and Appeals Board upheld dismissal of the shoulder claim (allowing the neck claim to proceed), the Supreme Court found this ruling improperly cast the ALJ “into the role of advocate rather than arbiter..”
The Court held that an ALJ’s unprompted ruling on an issue only preserves it for appeal if doing so serves both judicial economy and fairness and allowing Darden to revive the notice defense on appeal would undermine fairness because it never gave Sun a fair opportunity to contest that specific theory at the hearing, so the Court vacated the court of appeals’ decision and remanded the shoulder injury claim to the Labor Commission for consideration on the merits.