The prime contractor of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory wants a federal judge to dismiss a long-running lawsuit by two employees, a married couple, who the contractor said balked at getting COVID-19 vaccines but suffered no real damages.
The motion for summary judgment and supporting materials were filed by the management joint venture between Battelle and the University of Tennessee on Jan. 9.
Unless U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley grants summary judgment to either side, the litigation brought by Jeffrey and Jessica Bilyeu could go to trial in April. Over time, four other plaintiff lab employees have dropped out of the suit first filed in October 2021.
The case appeared to be settled in June 2022, but a final deal was never consummated and one year the parties gave up on mediation and revived the legal fight.
UT-Battelle enacted a COVID-19 vaccination mandate Oct. 15, 2021, according to court filings. That was soon after President Joe Biden filed an executive order on COVID-19 prevention, seeking to have most federal employees and contractors inoculated. But the mandate was lifted by Dec. 3 due to another federal court’s ruling against mandate enforcement.
In its latest filings, UT-Battelle said the plaintiffs could not show real financial harm.
“The religious accommodation she [Jessica Bilyeu] initially sought was granted, and she received the accommodation of unpaid leave,” the contractor said. “Before she was placed on leave, Ms. Bilyeu requested a medical exemption to the vaccine mandate [while breastfeeding], which was approved. She never missed work or lost any benefits,” the contractor said.
The company said Jessica Bilyeu never lost any actual pay and her husband lost slightly more than $1,000 in income for a single day of unpaid leave. Jeffrey Bilyeu substituted vacation days to account for the remainder of the unpaid leave assessed, according to UT-Battelle filings.
During his deposition, Jeffrey Bilyeu said the loss of the day’s pay did not force him to stop construction of a new home, nor cause his family to forgo any medical care.
During Jessica Bilyeu’s deposition, she agreed that she knew of many retail businesses that went belly up during the pandemic, while Oak Ridge Lab staff stayed employed.
