While more than 300 plaintiffs are now listed, an amended complaint last month by guards and other anti-vaccine workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington has the same central weakness as the original one rejected by a federal judge, government lawyers said in a filing last week.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice in the Eastern District of Washington ruled in December against putting the government’s contractor vaccination mandate on hold, saying the original complaint was too flawed to support such action.
In a 37-page motion to dismiss Feb. 1, assistant U.S. attorneys said the same “fatal” shortcomings exist in the latest version targeting the COVID-19 vaccination policy.
“The now-314 Plaintiffs apparently seek class action results from claims that require individualized evaluation, and they fail to sufficiently plead facts to support those individualized claims,” according to the motion. The “overwhelming majority” lack standing to sue.
The dismissal motion said 65 plaintiffs have won “accommodations” by their employers at Hanford, presumably in some form of medical or religious exemption — typically the only accommodations available to DOE contractors. Another three have become vaccinated and 19 have placed no information in the court file on their vaccination status. Most of the rest are “unripe” because they await a ruling yet on their exemption request.
The chief allegation among the plaintiffs is the “supposed forced choice between receiving an unwanted vaccine or jeopardizing their continued employment,” according to the motion to dismiss.
The motion also said DOE’s Hanford site manager, Brian Vance, should be dismissed from the litigation. “Plaintiffs still have not alleged any facts to indicate how Defendant Vance is plausibly liable for any of the specific causes of action asserted, beyond the conclusory allegation that Vance ‘has directed Hanford sitewide enforcement and implementation,’” the government said.
After a judge in Georgia issued a nationwide restraining order in December against the government’s contractor vaccination mandate, DOE put on hold plans to fire contractors who refuse to take the shot and don’t qualify for an exemption. Arguments on that restraining order were set to be heard in April by a federal appeals court based in Atlanta.
The Hanford suits names a slew of defendants including President Joe Biden, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Vance, as well as major contractors and top executives working at the heavily-contaminated nuclear cleanup site.
