A lawsuit against the Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory over a COVID-19 vaccination mandate is on hold pending settlement talks, a federal judge in Tennessee said Monday.
U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr. stayed all further proceedings in the case, brought by a half-dozen vaccine holdouts against contractor UT-Battelle, and told the parties to submit between one and three names of agreed-upon mediators by April 25, according to a Monday order posted online.
“Pursuant to the representations of both parties, an attempt at mediating the dispute will take place before any further progression in this matter,” the federal district judge said in the order.
The move is no surprise given a prior status report filed days earlier in the case. The plaintiffs, initially placed on unpaid leave after refusing to become inoculated against the airborne virus, returned to work in December after a federal judge in Georgia blocked enforcement of President Joe Biden’s vaccination mandate for federal contractors.
The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta heard arguments Friday on whether a national restraining order against enforcement of the contractor mandate should be lifted or remain in place. One of the appellate judges said during the arguments that the case could well end up before the U.S. Supreme Court: the court of final appeal and an independent branch of the federal government.
