Six employees at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have agreed to settle their lawsuit contesting the COVID-19 vaccination policy implemented by prime contractor UT-Battelle, according to a document filed in federal court Monday.
In a one-page “mediator’s report to the court” attorney Chadwick Hatmaker of the Knoxville law firm Woolf-McClane, the mediator agreed upon by the parties, said mediation was held and the parties settled.
No other mediation sessions are scheduled and the case is settled, according to the brief form filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Local litigation rules require mediation updates be filed with the court within five days of the settlement talks.
The document included no details on terms of the settlement itself reached between the lab’s DOE contractor and plaintiffs Jeffrey and Jessica Bilyeu, Stephanie Bruffey, Mark Cofer, Gregory Sheets and William Webb.
The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in October 2021, saying the joint venture between Battelle and the University of Tennessee was being more rigid on vaccinations than was necessary under the executive orders issued by President Joe Biden. The plaintiffs revised their complaint in January after receiving a notice of right to sue from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In early May, U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr. said the parties appeared serious about settlement and instructed them to report back on settlement talks by July 8.
The plaintiffs had already returned to work, from unpaid leave, at Oak Ridge after a federal district judge issued a national injunction against COVID shot mandates by federal contractors. The vast majority of employees in the DOE weapons complex elected to be vaccinated against the potentially deadly illness, according to DOE.
