COVID-19 Enforcement and Penalties for Business

Businesses face fines and penalties from local and state governments for not complying with regulations when reopening (and potentially shutting down again if cases continue to rise). While some states such as Alabama do not have penalties for businesses, others such as California have both confusing and complex statewide and local penalties that vary from city to city. 

For example, San Diego County businesses face fines of up to $2,500/per day for violating the city’s COVID-19 orders, and the city has followed through with issuing numerous fines. Statewide, Governor Newsom’s COVID-19 ‘Strike Team’ has focused on educating California businesses on compliance while also issuing fines for thousands of businesses who failed to comply with regulations. The state has said they will pull business licenses if businesses continue to fail to follow state guidelines. Neighboring Los Angeles County has its own set of regulations and enforcement. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has investigated tens of thousands of businesses after receiving complaints and shut down dozens of businesses. Other states such as New York and Pennsylvania have similar confusing structures, with statewide regulations as well as varying local city and county rules and penalties.

Keeping up to date with different regulations in one location is time-consuming and confusing enough; trying to do this when your business operates in multiple regional locations is overwhelming and potentially expensive. 

Resilence Heath’s Legal Regulatory Aggregator (“LRA”) helps businesses comply and stay up to do date with the shifting regulatory landscape. Our legal guidance includes the costs of failing to comply in one location versus another. With our LRA, businesses can build their profile to include multiple locations and receive updates on any important changes in the law. 

For each client, our legal team captures the entire universe of mandatory guidance – from the federal government to the local mayor. Currently, the LRA pulls in content from over 160 discrete websites, aggregating almost 1000 pieces of guidance. Employers who were spending significant time and resources identifying and parsing these regulations can now log onto the LRA, select their location and industry, and see all relevant federal, state, and local guidance.

The LRA includes guidance on six important categories: (1) Travel and Immigration; (2) Employee Accommodations; (3) Employee Leave; (4) Screening Employees; (5) Workplace Safety Protocols and; (6) Responding to Infection. Each of these topic areas is again divided into applicable subcategories, allowing users to easily toggle between high-level and granular content displays.

For more information about our LRA and other services, please visit …