A former radiation technician fired after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine told a federal appeals court last week the Department of Energy’s environmental prime at Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is not entitled to sovereign immunity.
In a legal brief filed March 19, lawyers for Yolonda Riggs, told the Sixth U.S. Court of Appeals that UCOR, an Amentum-Jacobs partnership, is not immune from Riggs’ wrongful termination lawsuit. Riggs was fired in January 2022 after refusing vaccination, citing religious beliefs.
“Ms. Riggs does not contest that the government validly conferred upon UCOR the authority to manage and operate the Oak Ridge Cleanup project,” according to the document. But the government “did not confer authority upon UCOR to implement a vaccine mandate.”
“It is far-fetched for UCOR to argue that it was authorized, and indeed, mandated by a July 2010 contract to implement a vaccine mandate to fight against COVID-19, a pandemic that did not enter the public lexicon until 2020,” according to the Riggs brief.
In its filing in February, UCOR said days after the Biden executive order, the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force issued its initial guidance for federal contractors and subcontractors. The guidance said contractors must “ensure that all covered contractor employees are fully vaccinated for COVID-19, unless the employee is legally entitled to an accommodation.” The task force set a deadline of Dec. 8, 2021, which was later extended to Jan. 18, 2022. The guidance was not lifted until May 2023.
UCOR has argued it is immune from the lawsuit, saying it was following President Joe Biden’s executive order 14042, the COVID-19 federal contractor mandate in September 2021. Riggs’ attorneys, however, say any immunity is not absolute — because the cleanup contract explicitly says UCOR will comply with Tennessee law.
In November 2021 the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law blocking various private and government entities from compelling workers to provide proof of vaccination in order to keep a job. The vaccination mandate announced by UCOR president Ken Rueter in August 2021, however, said workers must “provide proof” of vaccination.
UCOR operated without any mandate from the start of the pandemic in early 2020 until November 2021, “and there is no reason it could not have accommodated Ms. Riggs (and complied with Tennessee law) by continued use of alternative measures,” according to the brief. Measures such as remote work, physical distance, frequent testing and mandatory masking, were used at various times by UCOR.
“UCOR cannot have it both ways—either UCOR was in violation of the contract if allowed employees to remain unvaccinated or it was not,” according to the Riggs brief. “The fact that UCOR allowed some employees to remain unvaccinated contradicts its argument that it would be in violation of the contract if it did not mandate vaccines.”
