The administration of President Joe Biden has yet to submit its legal response to a brief filed earlier this month in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit over legality of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for most workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
The current deadline for the government’s answering briefing in what is now called David Donovan, et al [and others] versus Brian Vance, who is DOE’s top boss at Hanford, is Dec. 23.
The DOE seeks to extend that by 21 days, which translates to Friday Jan. 13.
A brief filed earlier this month by attorneys for the Silent Majority Foundation, which represents about 300 workers at the nuclear cleanup site, maintains that U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice was mistaken in ruling in May that the case should be thrown out due to procedural shortcomings.
In the brief, the plaintiffs argue the federal district court erred in concluding the presidential executive orders that spawned the vaccine mandate in September 2021 did not violate the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act.
Prior to the case being dismissed in the federal district court of Eastern Washington, “the Federal District Court of Arizona, in a case based upon substantially the same factual setting [Mark Brnovich versus Biden], and the same legal theories, entered a fully opposite ruling,” according to the plaintiffs.
Thanks to legal victories in various other federal courts, more than a quarter of the states, 14, have court orders in place barring the U.S. government from enforcing a federal vaccine mandate for government contractors, the Hanford-based plaintiffs said in the filing.
“As of the date of this Brief, the Contractor Mandate is enjoined in the following states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming.”
The Eleventh Circuit ruled in September the White House exceeded its authority by using the Procurement Act to justify a COVID vaccination requirement for most contractor employees. However, the appeals court did say that a trial court judge in Georgia went too far in ordering a nationwide injunction against the mandate.
DOE says it no longer requires feds, contractors and visitors to submit information on their vaccination status. Indoor masking rules have largely been shelved except at worksites in areas currently experiencing high local transmission rates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
