Before Christmas, a federal judge rejected a request from 292 workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to temporarily block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate at the cleanup complex in Washington state, and lawyers had not filed new paperwork as of New Year’s.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice in the Eastern District of Washington refused to put the vaccine mandate on hold for contractor employees at the cleanup site on Dec. 17, writing in a 20-page order that “Plaintiffs’ Complaint and present motion are replete with procedural, factual, and legal deficiencies that cannot support the extraordinary remedy of injunctive relief.”
The plaintiffs are using lawyers affiliated with the Silent Majority Foundation, a group that has filed various suits against vaccination mandates, including one against a COVID-19 vaccination order in Washington state that has already been thrown out in the same court, the judge said in the ruling.
The suit was filed in November over the imposition of mandatory vaccination rules under September executive orders handed down by President Joe Biden. The list of defendants in the case includes seven DOE contractors and individuals including Biden and DOE’s site manager for Hanford, Brian Vance.
The federal defendants have argued, among other things, the plaintiffs’ claims are not ripe for adjudication. The deadline for compliance with the vaccination policy has been pushed back until Jan. 18 and includes provisions allowing individuals to seek exemptions. Many people are in the process of seeking exemptions from the Hanford order, the judge said.
