A Washington state law that makes it easier for workers at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site to qualify for certain compensation benefits has been upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced in a press release Wednesday that a three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit unanimously upheld the law that was passed in 2018 and last year withstood a federal legal challenge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
The Ninth Circuit held that Washington has the right to create laws giving workers easier access to the benefits if they become ill because of their work at Hanford, a former plutonium production complex that is now home to a massive cleanup program, Ferguson said. The panel ruled Congress gave states authority to provide workers’ compensation benefits to injured contractors on federal lands. Judge Milan Smith, appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote the opinion.
“Hanford workers are cleaning up one of the most contaminated sites on the planet, and they deserve these protections,” Ferguson said in the release.
Under the state law, when a worker who had least one shift at Hanford develops one of several illnesses linked to exposure to volatile chemical gases at the site, there is an assumption the individual became ill because of an exposure at work. These illnesses include chronic beryllium disease, respiratory diseases, and neurological problems.
Before this bill was passed, Hanford workers suffering from an illness related to their job had to prove that whatever they had wasn’t caused by something else.
