A federal district judge in East Tennessee ruled this week that employees fired after refusing COVID-19 vaccinations by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site cleanup prime, cannot pursue their litigation as a class action suit.
“Given the number of individualized inquiries necessary to resolve each plaintiff’s claim, a class action would quickly devolve into a series of individual claims,” U.S. District Court Judge Travis McDonough said in the Nov. 6 ruling. “Furthermore, given that plaintiffs allege that they have suffered serious injuries and are seeking significant damages, it is certainly worth a plaintiff’s time and effort to bring suit on his own.”
Because plaintiff circumstances vary greatly from person-to-person, the court cannot grant “reinstatement to all employees in one stroke,” according to the ruling.
In a footnote, the judge stressed the court does not “pass judgment on the merits of any individual plaintiff’s claims.”
“Plaintiffs have not provided the court with any evidence whatsoever regarding how many employees suffered an adverse employment action due to their refusal to be vaccinated,” according to the 20-page ruling. Instead, the plaintiffs have said only the class size would be more than 50.
“[C]ourts routinely reject class certification of classes consisting of a relatively small number of potential plaintiffs,” according to the court document, the judge held.
Plaintiffs Carlton Speer, Malena Dennis, and Zachariah Duncan, filed a discrimination lawsuit against Amentum-led UCOR in November 2022. An amended complaint was filed in December 2022. Named plaintiffs describe themselves as Christians who believed COVID-19 vaccines were derived from fetal cell lines and counter to their religious beliefs. But the named plaintiffs wanted to certify a class action lawsuit that would include others in the same situation.
But not everyone in the proposed class holds identical religious beliefs, the decision held. “For instance, one of the proposed class members is a member of the Satanic Temple.”
In late August 2021 UCOR required all its employees and subcontractor employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Nov. 1, 2021.
UCOR granted many exemptions based on disability, providing accommodations as a result but fired 98 people, including the plaintiffs, who refused COVID-19 vaccines based on religious beliefs, according to the decision.
A federal jury trial is currently penciled in for September 2024 in Chattanooga, Tenn., according to the online court file.
