Margo Lopez, shareholder of the Washington, D.C. office at Ogletree Deakins, is a regular contributor to Pit & Quarry whose practice is concentrated on safety and health law litigation. Lopez offered insights on the Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA) during the 2025 Pit & Quarry Roundtable & Conference, reflecting on MSHA’s rulemaking under the Biden administration and what might be in store for the agency during President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump nominated Wayne Palmer as MSHA assistant secretary on Feb. 24. The conversation here, which took place Jan. 31, was edited for brevity and clarity.
KEVIN YANIK (PIT & QUARRY): How would you sum up the changes that MSHA underwent over the last four years during the Biden administration?
MARGO LOPEZ (OGLETREE DEAKINS): The most significant thing has been the rulemaking. That’s the type of change the agency can implement that will last beyond the administration with MSHA for decades. They don’t often rescind or change their standards once they’re on the books.
With the silica and mobile equipment safety program rule, MSHA has given itself many more enforcement opportunities and, they would say, they are promoting safety. That’s true for a lot of it, but there are issues with what they’ve done that we will be dealing with for a very long time.
MSHA bringing back pattern of violations enforcement and impact inspections under the Biden administration also sent a strong message that those two initiatives aren’t going away. So, while we may see them rolled back – somewhat or completely under this Trump administration – it’s clear MSHA knows how to use those enforcement powers.
YANIK: There were 28 reported mining fatalities in 2024. How do you characterize MSHA’s rhetoric on the mining fatalities front?
LOPEZ: MSHA definitely measures their success, in large part, on fatality numbers. Unfortunately, we’ve reached somewhat of a plateau in recent years with the number going slightly up or down, varying by 10 fatalities or so from year to year.
There was a low back in 2016 of 25 fatalities, and we’d love to see that get lower. But it’s up to the industry to make that happen. Not that the industry is doing anything wrong. Mine operators as a whole are doing a great deal to advance safety, but MSHA standards can only go so far.
YANIK: What do you expect MSHA enforcement to look like during Trump’s second term?
LOPEZ: Enforcement will probably continue as we’ve seen it. The impact inspections can seem very unfair. Quite often, it’s a mystery why they chose that mine to inspect. It doesn’t seem justified a lot of the time when you’re looking at a mine’s violation history.
I think we will continue to see impact inspections. I think we’ll continue to see pattern of violation enforcement, at least until we have a new assistant secretary.
YANIK: What are your expectations on the rulemaking side under Trump?
LOPEZ: I’d be really surprised if we saw a rule come out in the next four years. It takes a long time to put a rule out. Quite often, with this type of administration, rules are not something we expect to see. However, the mobile equipment safety program rule originated in the prior Trump administration. I’ll never say never, but I’m not expecting any rules.
YANIK: Enforcement of MSHA’s silica rule is set to begin on the metal/nonmetal front in April 2026 and this April for coal operations. What does the road ahead look like for this rule and its enforcement?
LOPEZ: Everybody needs to get ready for this rule until we see something dialed back, changed or delayed. It’s too late to start tomorrow. We probably should have started getting ready for this rule earlier. It’s good that MSHA gave us two years.
I’m an optimist, so I’m hoping there will be some changes or enforcement delays that come out of this through litigation going on right now. We have an administration in place that is already talking about regulatory freezes and delays on regulations that have been promulgated that haven’t become effective yet. I’m hopeful the industry may have more time to get ready.
Read also: Ways to effectively control silica, prep for MSHA regulation
YANIK: As the aggregate industry introduces more technology, how will MSHA keep up?
LOPEZ: They’re going to have a tremendous challenge keeping up, just in terms of knowledge for inspectors to understand what they’re looking at, what they’re inspecting and how they should apply current MSHA standards to that equipment.
One thing that is good and bad about MSHA’s regulations as they are now is that they’re very broad. The good thing is, MSHA is probably not going to feel compelled to do a lot of rulemaking to adapt to the new technology as it comes out, because a lot of their standards will apply to autonomous equipment and other types of new technologies because the standards are so broad.
On the other hand, broad standards are vague standards, and they can be misapplied or applied in ways that the industry was not given fair notice about. We need to keep our eyes out for that. Whatever our industry can do to educate MSHA about this technology – all the safety controls and redundancies built into it – the better off we’ll be.
YANIK: What else are you keeping an eye on?
LOPEZ: We must be sure not to forget about the Federal Mine Safety & Health Review Commission. This is the court system that reviews MSHA citations. They are the ones who say to MSHA: ‘What does S&S (significant and substantial) mean?’ ‘What does unwarrantable failure mean?’ ‘What sort of evidence is necessary to prove that a miner’s termination was due to retaliation for protected safety activity?’
That’s a very important body of judges and commissioners. The commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to a six-year term. We currently have three commissioners in place – all filling essentially what are Democratic seats. So, it’s important that we have those two remaining seats in the commission filled soon under this administration.
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