The Justice Department last week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a 2020 ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a state law making it easier for workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to win compensation for work-related health problems.
The move has prompted swift rebukes from the Washington attorney general and a citizens group.
“The Trump administration attempted to gut Washington’s protections for Hanford workers that get sick on the job — and my legal team beat them twice,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a Tuesday press release. “Now the [Joe] Biden administration is continuing Donald Trump’s cruel effort to eliminate these critical protections for the hardworking men and women at Hanford … just days after Labor Day, no less,” he added.
Likewise, Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, said in a press release the advocacy group is “appalled” the Biden Justice Department is seeking “to dismantle” a 2018 state law “passed to improve the standards that Hanford nuclear site workers must meet in order to receive worker compensation benefits.”
The Justice Department filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the high court on Sept. 8. The writ is a document basically contending a lower court erred in applying the law and urging the Supreme Court to hear the case.
The central question in the 128 page document filed by Justice is if a state compensation law that applies “exclusively to federal contract workers who perform services at a specified federal facility is barred by principles of intergovernmental immunity,” or is instead allowed by another standard that would treat the property as if it “were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the State.”
After being passed by the Washington legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) in March 2018, House Bill 1723 took effect in June 2018.
In 2019, the law survived a challenge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington. It was later upheld in August 2020 by the Ninth Circuit.
The state law lowered the burden for workers to establish their work at the former plutonium production complex, now a cleanup site, is linked to illnesses such as respiratory diseases, neurological problems and chronic beryllium disease.
