A federal judge says he plans by the first week of June to rule on a Department of Justice lawsuit against the state of Washington over eased workers’ compensation requirements for workers at the Hanford Site.
Judge Stanley Bastian, of U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, heard arguments May 22 from the parties. He reminded attorneys that they had agreed the lawsuit could be settled with his ruling on summary judgment rather than proceeding to trial.
In a lawsuit filed in December, the Justice Department said a state law that took effect in June 2018 breached the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The law shifts the burden of proof for deciding state workers’ compensation claims from the personnel to the federal government for most ill or injured Hanford workers.
The Justice Department asked the judge to issue a summary judgment ruling to overturn the state law. Unlike most workers in Washington state, employees of Hanford contractors and subcontractors no longer must show that many illnesses were caused by a specific workplace exposure. Washington state has asked the judge to uphold the new law on summary judgment.
The Washington state Department of Labor and Industries approves or denies worker claims, with the self-insured Energy Department covering the costs of approved claims. The Energy Department may make a case to the state that factors such as lifestyle, heredity, or exposure at another job caused a worker’s illness. But Christopher Healy, Justice Department attorney, said proving that Hanford did not cause an illness would be nearly impossible.
“I am not terribly sympathetic,” the judge replied. The difficulty workers have showing that a specific exposure to a hazardous chemical or radioactive material caused an illness, particularly given some poor recordkeeping at Hanford, is precisely what Washington state was addressing with the new law, he said. The law is retroactive to the start of work at the former plutonium production complex during World War II.
