Although a federal judge in Tennessee turned down a preliminary injunction for vaccine holdouts at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and contractor UT-Battelle has asked that the lawsuit be tossed, a federal magistrate could take over the case.
On Tuesday, District Judge Charles Atchley, Jr. said he wants a federal magistrate judge to take the case. The attorneys should “discuss among themselves — and with their clients —the possibility of consenting to the exercise of a magistrate judge’s authority in this action,” Atchley said.
“The magistrate judges do not have to delay civil cases for felony trials; therefore, firm trial dates are more likely in the event that the parties consent,” Judge Atchley said in a two-page order. The parties have 45 days, or roughly mid-December, to decide whether to have the case handled by the federal magistrate.
The contractor, a University of Tennessee and Battelle team, filed its dismissal motion Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. In a lawsuit that raised eyebrows across the DOE nuclear complex, UT-Battelle argued the half-dozen lab employees refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine have “failed to exhaust administrative remedies” before heading to federal court.
Late Friday, Atchley refused to enter an injunction blocking the DOE contractor from placing vaccine refusers who have been granted religious exemptions on unpaid leave by the end of the month. The judge said while he believes the contractor could have been more accommodating toward people resisting the vaccine on religious grounds, the plaintiffs would not suffer “irreparable harm” as a result of the vaccine mandate that grew out of President Joe Biden’s executive orders in September, and weren’t prevented from exercising their religious beliefs.
