A new law easing Washington state workers’ compensation program requirements for claims from employees of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site violates the U.S. Constitution, according to the Department of Justice. The agency plans to file a civil lawsuit against the state near the end of this week to block the law, if a resolution cannot be reached, it said in a Nov. 5 letter to Gov. Jay Inslee.
The Justice Department said the new law breaches the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it would directly regulate the federal government and holds it to a different standard than other entities in the state.
The lawsuit did not appear to have been filed as of deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor.
The Washington state Attorney General’s Office has requested a meeting to discuss the issue. But Attorney General Bob Ferguson said that if the Justice Department tries to block the state law in court, he looks forward to defending it. “Hanford workers deserve to be compensated for the health issues caused by their dangerous work,” he said.
In March, Inslee signed the legislation requiring the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries to presume that a wide range of health conditions suffered by Hanford personnel were caused by their work at the former plutonium production complex and current cleanup site. They include neurological and respiratory illnesses and many cancers.
The law means Hanford workers will no longer have to demonstrate a connection between their health problems and time at Hanford, even just a single eight-hour work day.
The Department of Energy, which is self-insured to pay state workers’ compensation claims for Hanford, can provide information to challenge the presumption, including the workers’ history of smoking, their lifestyle, or exposure to toxins at home or other jobs.
In a letter Monday to Inslee, watchdog group Hanford Challenge and the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 598 urged the governor to support workers who risk their lives to clean up Hanford. The new law, which took effect in June, is needed because of the long history of safety violations at the site and the difficulty employees have in proving specific exposures, they said. For instance, Hanford workers sickened by chemical vapors cannot identify which of the 1,500 chemicals in the gases in the head space of radioactive waste storage tanks that vent into the air could have caused their illnesses.
The legislation was controversial with business and insurance interests. A legislative staff report on the bill before it passed said critics called it “breathtaking in its scope and inclusivity. The bill does not take into account any nexus between conditions and any particular class of workers or exposure.”
Hanford Challenge and Local 598 argue Washington state’s new law is similar to a measure passed 40 years ago for firefighters in the state, who they said faced nearly identical risks as Hanford workers. Firefighters may respond to fires with unknown chemical contamination in smoke. “We stand alongside 32 other states having adopted similar provisions to provide better protections for firefighters, and now we seek to provide the same for our Hanford workers,” the groups said in their letter to Inslee.
The new law covers neurological and respiratory diseases, plus beryllium sensitization and acute and chronic beryllium disease. It also covers a range of cancers, including thyroid, breast, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, ovarian, and lymphomas. The coverage lasts for a lifetime for most health issues if the disease was developed after starting work at Hanford. The law also covers heart problems experienced within 72 hours of exposure to fumes, toxic substances or chemicals at the site.
The state Department of Labor and Industries reports that it has approved 28 claims under the new law and denied six. Another 49 claims are pending.
