A hearing was to continue this morning in a federal courtroom in Knoxville, Tenn., over a preliminary injunction requested by a half-dozen employees at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory who seek to avoid being placed on unpaid leave for refusal to take a vaccine against COVID-19.
The hearing began yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in the lawsuit brought by the vaccine holdouts against UT-Battelle: a contractor team made up of the University of Tennessee and Battelle that operates the DOE Office of Science lab at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
The plaintiffs argue the DOE contractor could take safety measures during the pandemic, such as COVID-19 testing, mask wearing or telecommuting, which would allow them to remain gainfully employed at the laboratory without being vaccinated. A temporary restraining order was issued against the DOE contractor on Oct. 15 by U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley, who is hearing the case this week.
Other anti-vaccine order lawsuits brought by multiple employees are underway at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and plans for such litigation have been announced by a group at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The administration of President Joe Biden is pushing all embedded federal contractors to get their employees inoculated by Dec. 8.
Most DOE contractors who are reporting vaccination rates have said that a very large majority of their workforces are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
