A vaccine mandate by the Department of Energy’s management contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is tantamount to the contractor practicing medicine without a license, a lawyer for about 95 employees refusing to be inoculated against COVID-19 said in a legal filing Monday in federal court.
Last week, on the day before Thanksgiving, attorneys for Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), said the plaintiffs’ request for injunction relief is based upon arguments “more political than legal.” SRNS lawyers also denied the plaintiffs’ claims that a couple of the vaccine holdouts have already been fired.
The two sides are set to make oral arguments at 11 a.m. Eastern Time today before U.S. Judge Michelle Childs in the U.S. District Court for South Carolina.
“Finally, as discussed in SRNS’s Motion to Dismiss, Plaintiffs have failed to identify a clear mandate of state public policy that would prohibit private employers from terminating employees for refusing to follow a mandatory vaccination policy,” according to the brief filed on behalf of SRNS by Columbia., S.C.,-based attorney Michael Carrouth. “Therefore, even if the two Plaintiffs were actually terminated by SRNS, the Second Amended Complaint still would be subject to dismissal due to this critical flaw.”
SRNS, which has said 95% of its roughly 5,500-person workforce at Savannah River already complies with the vaccination policy created by September executive orders by President Joe Biden, has informed those refusing to take the shot by Nov. 30 to expect to be terminated, unless they secure medical or religious exemptions.
In the plaintiffs’ Monday filing, Charlotte, N.C., attorney Donald Brown argues that in hopes of attracting future DOE contracts, the owners of SRNS are in effect practicing medicine by forcing hesitant workers to take something “into their veins” or lose their jobs.
“Nonetheless, they obviously hope to continue to get federal contracts, and therefore, are attempting for financial gain to force these experimental vaccinations, which are by their very nature medical, upon their employees,” according to the latest plaintiff’s filing. “This is being done primarily for their own commercial gain. This is improper and should be stricken, even if the language of the mandate itself did not constitute a contract,” the plaintiffs filing goes on to say.
The plaintiffs originally filed their case against the management and operations contractor in state court on Oct. 14, about the time SRNS wanted workers not complying with the vaccine policy to turn in their site access badges as a prelude to ultimate termination. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions promptly had the case removed to federal district court.
