The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously struck down a 2018 Washington state law aimed at making it easier for Hanford Site workers to claim compensation for illnesses contracted on the job.
The law unconstitutionally discriminated against federal workers and contractors, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in an opinion published Tuesday. Specifically, the court said, the state law violated the constitution’s supremacy clause, which essentially holds that states may not regulate the federal government.
The court — an independent branch of the federal government — was also unswayed by Washington’s argument that the federal lawsuit was rendered moot when the state, after getting sued, broadened its worker’s compensation law to cover anyone working a radiological hazardous waste facility in Washington and not only people working directly or indirectly for the federal government.
“If there is money at stake, the case is not moot,” Breyer wrote. “The United States asserts that, if we rule in its favor, it will either recoup or avoid paying between $17 million and $37 million in workers’ compensation claims that lower courts have awarded under the earlier law.”
Washington state broadened its workers compensation law in 2022 after the Donald Trump administration sued over the original law, passed in 2018. There had been about 200 claims under the state law since it was passed in 2018, Washington Deputy Solicitor General Tera Heintz told the Supreme court in April during oral arguments.
In a statement posted online, Bob Ferguson, the Washington state attorney general, said the Supreme Court decision would have “little practical impact” on sickened workers at Hanford or elsewhere because “the federal government has not challenged [the] new law” covering radiological workers in the state.
