A legal challenge to COVID-19 vaccination policy at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state will be heard in early May by a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, according to a notice posted online last week.
Oral arguments in David Donovan versus Brian Vance are scheduled for 9 a.m. Pacific Time on May 8 at the William Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle. Vance is DOE’s site manager for Hanford.
Donavan and about 310 other plaintiff employees, many of them security guards at Hanford, have challenged two September 2021 executive orders issued by President Joe Biden aimed at “ameliorating the impact of COVID-19 on federal contractors and the federal workforce,” according to a notice on the Ninth Circuit calendar website.
“Although your case is currently scheduled for oral argument, the panel may decide to submit the case on the briefs instead,” according to instructions provided online to attorneys on the case. The Ninth Circuit has a link providing webcast access for audio and video for recent appeals court arguments.
The Hanford workers, represented by lawyers associated with the Silent Majority Foundation, want to overturn the earlier dismissal of their case by U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice in Eastern Washington. Rice dismissed the challenge by the workers in May 2022.
The Justice Department argued in December that the federal judge was justified, giving the plaintiffs two opportunities to fix major procedural defects in the complaint. The government’s attorneys have said only a handful of plaintiffs have received final rulings on their administrative challenges to vaccine requirements. Most did not seek exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination policy on religious or medical grounds.
The DOE has said well over 90% of its federal staff and contract workers have been inoculated against the illness that claimed the lives of more than 1 million Americans. With the decline in the number and severity of cases, DOE has halted most COVID-19-related requirements, and no longer asks workers about their vaccination status.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled last September the Biden administration went too far in using the Procurement Act as its legal basis to get most feds and contractors vaccinated. The 11th Circuit covers the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia. The Ninth Circuit covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and some U.S. territories.
