While the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected a 2018 workers compensation law affecting nuclear cleanup personnel at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, a state official predicted a revised version of the law approved earlier this year will survive.
“Because the legislature already fixed the issues the federal government raised, there is little practical impact in Washington as a result of this ruling,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a Tuesday press release.
“The federal government has not challenged this new law [Senate Bill 5890],” Ferguson said. “If they do, we will defend these protections all the way back up to the Supreme Court again if we have to,” Ferguson said in the release.
The 2022 law, passed with bipartisan support in the legislature and signed March 11 by Gov. Jay Inslee (D), altered the 2018 law so that protections apply to all Hanford Site workers, including state employees, Ferguson said.
In its Tuesday opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court said the 2022 law is not something it needs to be concerned about at this time. “[N]or does the Court know how Washington’s state courts will interpret the new law.”
The Supreme Court in its nine-to-zero decision 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.
The high court in January agreed to hear the Justice Department challenge to the 2018 law, previously upheld by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
State Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46th District, Seattle), who also directs a Hanford citizen group, Heart of America Northwest, promised to work with labor unions and others to take up for workers who have already won compensation awards until the 2018 version of the law.
“A worker can be on their first day on the job at Hanford and be exposed to deadly beryllium for just a few minutes leading to a debilitating fatal disease,” Pollet said in a written statement.
