United States v. Washington

On June 21, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Washington, a case concerning a Washington state workers’ compensation law that applied exclusively to federal contract workers at the Hanford nuclear cleanup site. The United States sued, arguing that the state law violated the constitutional principle of intergovernmental immunity by singling out the federal government and its contractors for discriminatory treatment. The District Court ruled for the United States, but the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the law was a generally applicable worker safety regulation. The Supreme Court disagreed. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court held that the Washington law discriminated against the federal government in violation of the Supremacy Clause, as it imposed differential burdens on federal contractors compared to comparable private sector workers. The judgment was reversed and the case remanded.

The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit, holding that the Washington law unconstitutionally discriminated against the federal government and its contractors; the case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the opinion.

Whether Washington's workers' compensation law, which imposed a differential standard on certain federal contractors at the Hanford site, violated the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity rooted in the Supremacy Clause by discriminating against the federal government.

The decision reinforced constitutional protections against discriminatory state laws targeting federal contractors, clarified the scope of intergovernmental immunity, and is likely to limit state regulatory authority over federal nuclear cleanup projects and other federal activities conducted through private contractors.