In a ruling against Washington state, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that a 2018 law — allowing for workers’ compensation for federal contract workers at a decommissioned nuclear facility — is unconstitutional.

The law would’ve made it easier for Hanford site workers to sue the federal government for compensation benefits over illnesses associated with radioactive waste generated at the nuclear facility — one of the first full-scale plutonium production reactors in the world, used in the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb.

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The Court invoked the Supremacy Clause, or intergovernmental immunity, in its decision — constitutional law which guarantees federal precedence over state law. In a slip opinion, the Court held that the workers’ compensation “singled out the Federal Government for unfavorable treatment,” referencing the estimated millions of dollars of cost.

This ruling explained that because the law specified the ability for workers to specifically take action against the federal government, it oversteps the state’s ability to regulate federal authority, which is interpreted as unconstitutional.

SB 5890, the law in question, was updated in 2022 to preempt a ruling against Washington state, and the Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argues that Tuesday’s ruling “has little practical impact” on Washington workers.

United States v. Washington et al dates back to a 2018 Trump administration challenge. In the case’s current iteration, the State of Washington argued that, because the law was updated in 2022 to more broadly apply to most workers at any nuclear waste facility, rather than just federal contract workers at Hanford, the law no longer discriminates against the federal government.

“Because the legislature already fixed the issues the federal government raised, there is little practical impact in Washington as a result of this ruling,” Ferguson wrote in a news release

“Hanford workers, and all others working with dangerous radioactive waste, remain protected. The federal government has not challenged this new law. If they do, we will defend these protections all the way back up to the Supreme Court again if we have to.”

In the unanimous ruling, Justice Stephen Breyer responded to Washington’s argument that the updated law renders Tuesday’s ruling moot.

“The United States asserts that, if we rule in its favor, it will either recoup or avoid paying between $17 million and $37 million in workers’ compensation claims that lower courts have awarded under the earlier law,” Breyer wrote, referencing at least $17 million already paid out by the federal government to Hanford workers

“Washington argues that, even if the United States wins, the Government will not recover or avoid any payments because the new statute applies retroactively and is broad enough to encompass any claim filed under the earlier law.”

“But it is not our practice to interpret statutes in the first instance … and we decline to do so here by deciding the retroactivity or breadth of Washington’s new law. Nor do we know how Washington’s state courts will resolve these questions. It is thus not ‘impossible’ that the United States will recover money if we rule in its favor, and this case is not moot.”

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