The state of Washington did not violate federal law by creating a law to protect workers engaged in cleanup activities at the Hanford Nuclear Site.

In U.S. v. Washington, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco unanimously affirmed on Tuesday a district court’s ruling that a 2018 law that would presume that Hanford workers who acquire an occupational disease did so in the course and scope of their work did not interfere with federal law.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit in December 2018, arguing that the Washington law “impermissibly” regulated the federal government and violated the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity.

H.B. 1723, which was signed into law in March 2018, makes it easier for past and current U.S. Department of Energy contractors to file compensable claims for a number of illnesses, including various cancers, acquired by working within the 560-square-mile federally operated and decommissioned nuclear site. Hanford workers helped manufacture the plutonium used in one of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

There are roughly 10,000 DOE contractor workers at the Hanford site, some of whom perform cleanup operations.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington granted summary judgment to Washington in June, finding that a congressional waiver of immunity that authorized states to apply their workers compensation laws to “all” federal projects in their state applied to Hanford. The U.S. government appealed.

The appellate court affirmed the district court’s decision. Although the U.S. argued that H.B. 1723 discriminatorily applied only to Hanford site workers who work indirectly or directly for the federal government — without any application to state or private entities performing work on or near the Hanford site — the appellate court dismissed this argument, finding that the statue authorized Washington to apply its workers comp laws to federal land located in the state “without limitation.”

A federal bill has also been introduced that would create an occupational disease presumption for DOE employees who are working at nuclear sites, including Hanford.

S.B. 4363, introduced in July by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), would make it easier for these workers to claim workers compensation benefits when they suffer from medical conditions as a result of exposure to toxic substances.

The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.