Since the confirmed, domestic start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has confirmed 7,916 cases of the illness among the agency’s workforce, a spokesperson said Thursday.
Likewise, the latest weekly total of confirmed cases is 313, a whopping jump of 242 since the office’s last weekly total from Dec. 16, the spokesperson said. The spike could reflect the national surge of the highly-contagious, but reportedly less severe, omicron variant of COVID-19 within the old weapons complex.
The $7.5-billion-a-year nuclear cleanup office enters 2022 with upwards of 90% of its federal and contractor workforce vaccinated against COVID-19 illness that had as of Friday claimed the lives of some 834,000 Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The cleanup office achieved that high inoculation before the slate of ongoing court challenges to stringent federal vaccination policies.
Since President Joe Biden rolled out executive orders in September for federal workers and contractors, the administration has won some and lost some in court.
The Supreme Court, an independent federal government branch, planned to hear oral arguments Friday, after deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor, in two cases concerning the federal government’s authority to effectively require vaccination against COVID-19 for most health care workers and employees of some large companies.
Here are some other recent legal developments related to COVID-19 and its effects on the DOE workforce:
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions
A federal district judge in South Carolina on Tuesday Dec. 28 refused to block the prime contractor at the DOE Savannah River Site in South Carolina from carrying out its vaccine mandate against employees who refuse to take the shot.
U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs said because Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is a private employer and not a government agency, it is not bound by an injunction imposed by a federal district judge in Georgia that blocked President Biden’s vaccine mandate for contractors.
As a private employer, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions retains the right to fire an “at-will” employee at any time, according to the 10-page order.
In addition, Judge Childs said while the South Carolina House recently passed a resolution taking a stance against private COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the legislation has not been finalized and signed by the government, so it is not yet state policy.
As a result, Judge Childs said not enough has changed at this point to overturn the court’s earlier decision, on Dec. 3, denying the plaintiff’s initial injunction request against the operations and management contractor for Savannah River.
The Hanford Site
Before Christmas, a federal judge rejected a request from 292 workers at the Hanford Site to temporarily block a vaccine mandate at the cleanup complex in Washington state, and lawyers had not filed new paperwork as of deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice in the Eastern District of Washington refused to put the mandate on hold for contractor employees at the cleanup site on Dec. 17, writing in a 20-page order that “Plaintiffs’ Complaint and present motion are replete with procedural, factual, and legal deficiencies that cannot support the extraordinary remedy of injunctive relief.”
The plaintiffs are using lawyers affiliated with the Silent Majority Foundation, a group that has filed various suits against vaccination mandates, including one against a COVID-19 vaccination order in Washington state that has already been thrown out in the same court, the judge said in the ruling.
The suit was filed in November and the list of defendants in the case includes seven DOE contractors and individuals including Biden and DOE’s site manager for Hanford, Brian Vance.
The federal defendants have argued, among other things, the plaintiffs’ claims are not ripe for adjudication. The deadline for compliance with Hanford’s vaccination policy has been pushed back until Jan. 18 and includes provisions allowing individuals to seek exemptions. Many people are in the process of seeking exemptions from the Hanford order, the judge said.
ORNL Vax Holdouts File Revamped Complaint Against UT-Battelle
Having now received clearance to sue from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, six employees refusing COVID-19 vaccination have filed a revised complaint in federal court against the DOE contractor operating the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
The revised complaint against UT-Battelle by Jeffrey Bilyeu and other plaintiffs was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley, Jr. earlier refused to permanently block the University of Tennessee-Battelle team running lab from implementing the employee vaccination mandate in part because the plaintiffs failed to first use administrative remedies before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The plaintiffs who sought medical or religious exemptions from taking the vaccine, claim UT-Battelle offered them no real alternative to either taking the vaccine or losing their income from the national laboratory.
“Rather than complying with its obligations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 … and the Americans with Disabilities Act,” UT-Battelle told the plaintiffs “they would either be terminated or placed on unpaid leave for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The revised complaint said UT-Battelle is taking a harder line on vaccinations than what the administration of President Joe Biden is requiring from large employers under an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) emergency policy being challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court. That policy leaves the door open for the non-vaccinated at big companies with 100 or more employees to remain on the payroll if they submit to conditions such as weekly testing.
The revised complaint also said many seeking religious exemptions underwent interviews with company officials. During these sessions people seeking such exemptions were asked why their religious beliefs appeared to be “stronger” than those of certain religious leaders, and if they used certain consumer products that reportedly contained or were tested with fetal cell lines, according to the complaint.
UT-Battelle had yet to file a reply at deadline for the Monitor.
