Ninety people suing the contractor over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate lack valid legal arguments or safety concerns and “simply do not want to do what is being asked,” the manager of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said in a legal filing this week.
That is the thrust of Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS)’ 18-page motion to dismiss a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for South Carolina. The filing, dated Thursday, is in response to an amended complaint submitted a week ago by the group of vaccine holdouts.
“Here, it is clear that Plaintiffs have no legitimate issues with the applicable COVID-19 safety measures,” according to the SRNS filing. “In an effort to have it their way, Plaintiffs are asking the Court to recognize novel and legally, unsupportable claims.
“If the Court issued a declaratory judgment under the facts alleged, it would be issuing an advisory opinion as to whether an employer can or cannot terminate an at-will employee for failure to comply with a workplace policy,” the contractor said.
SRNS, composed of Fluor, Newport News Nuclear and Honeywell International, also uses the motion to dismiss to take aim at several other arguments made by the plaintiffs who refuse to be vaccinated against the illness that’s been blamed for claiming nearly 760,000 American lives since early 2020, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.
The plaintiffs have not been fired to date and have not claimed wrongful termination, SRNS said. The plaintiffs filed suit, initially in state court, last month just before they were scheduled to turn in their site badges Oct. 15 for refusing to become vaccinated. The DOE contractor also said it was “ludicrous” to suggest, as plaintiffs claimed, that the company is practicing medicine without a license by requiring workers to be fully vaccinated in order to continue their employment.
The company also said the plaintiffs’ allegation that the federal vaccine mandate for contractor employees violates South Carolina “public policy” cannot hold up under scrutiny. South Carolina law does not recognize a claim for “violating public policy,” the SRNS filing said. Presuming it did, such a policy against federal vaccine mandates would require approval by the South Carolina legislature.
South Carolina’s Republican attorney general has joined a lawsuit by Georgia and other states challenging the legality of the federal vaccine mandates spurred by President Joe Biden’s September executive orders and subsequent workforce safety guidance. Likewise, the plaintiffs say that Gov. Henry McMaster (R) has expressed sympathy for individuals who don’t want to take the vaccine.
But a letter from the attorney general and a “Governor’s Tweet are not clear mandates of public policy,” SRNS told the court this week. Likewise, McMaster has also said he “supports employers’ rights to require COVID-19 vaccines for their workforces if they choose.”
The SRNS brief also makes frequent use of the term “at-will employees” to describe its staff at the Savannah River Site. At-will means that an employer can generally fire an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Workers are usually at-will employees unless they have a written contract or are covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
“Plaintiffs are at-will employees who must follow SRNS’s policy as a condition of employment,” the contractor said in the filing. “Plaintiffs may choose not to comply with the policy, but they risk their employment like they would if they violated any other employment policy.”
The management and operations contractor has said about 95% of its 5,500-person workforce has complied with the vaccination policy.
