At least some of the 300 employees involved with an unsuccessful federal court challenge to the COVID-19 vaccination policy at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state could take their case to the Ninth U.S. Circuit of Appeals, a lawyer working with the group said last week.
“We plan to appeal” a defeat last month in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, Pete Serrano, director and general counsel of the Silent Majority Foundation, said in an email response to Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
“We’re in the step of confirming plaintiff interest in appealing with our clients and have received a handful of positive responses,” Serrano said. The foundation, which has helped organize legal cases against government-backed vaccination mandates in the Pacific Northwest.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice last month dismissed the complaint brought by more than 300 employees at the DOE’s largest nuclear-weapons cleanup site. The federal judge ruled the vast majority of plaintiffs in the case never established standing to sue, failed to apply for a medical or religious exemption to the vaccine mandate, or failed to spell out how they are harmed by the policy that requires most federal and contractor employees at Hanford to be vaccinated.
The judge in the Hanford case also said that even if another federal judge’s order invalidating federal contractor vacination mandates is upheld by the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which covers cases in Alabama, Florida and Georgia — the ruling would not apply to the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit’s territory includes nine Western states.
