A nationwide injunction against contractor vaccine mandates should not apply to the management and operations contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Fluor [FLR]-led team said in Monday court filing.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is a privately-held employer, the company said in a filing with the U.S. District Court in South Carolina, so it is not affected by the early-December injunction handed down by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, which essentially blocked vaccine mandates arising from President Biden’s executive orders in September.
The court in South Carolina is weighing a lawsuit filed by 95 workers at SRNS who are refusing to take the shot. The judge in that case has already declined to enjoin the company’s mandate while those proceedings play out. The Savannah River Site is where the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration refills tritium reservoirs for nuclear weapons. The agency also plans to build a large factory there to manufacture plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear-weapon primary stages.
In early September, about a week before Biden’s executive orders, SRNS President and CEO Stuart MacVean announced a plan to make COVID-19 vaccination a condition of continued employment at the operations and management contractor.
And even if the contractor rolled out its policy after the executive orders, it does not mean SRNS or other government contractors “cannot decide themselves to require or continue to require COVID-19 vaccinations as private employers,” according to SRNS’ Monday filing.
The losing parties in both the Georgia and South Carolina federal district courts have both said they plan to appeal.
Meanwhile, in the Georgia case, a telephone hearing was scheduled Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time about the Justice Department’s request to reverse the injunction in that case.