A federal appeals court ruled that corrections officers are not owed hazard pay for alleged exposure to COVID without adequate protective gear at their workplace, according to an article in Bloomberg Law by Jennifer Bennett.
In 2020, nearly 200 correctional workers at a low-security federal facility in Connecticut sued in an effort to collect hazard pay. However, a lower district court threw out the case in 2021.
The corrections officers appealed in 2022. But in a 10-2 vote in February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed the lawsuit was without merit based on current Office of Personnel Management regulations for hazardous duty and environmentally differential pay.
“The potential ramifications of this case are far-reaching and cut across the entire federal workforce,” said Judge Raymond T. Chen. “That is not to say that such differential pay may not be warranted; rather, OPM’s schedules — as currently written — do not cover these kind of situations.”
In the court’s written opinion, it said that the relevant categories in the OMP regulations — virulent biologicals and microorganisms — don’t cover “ambient exposure to serious communicable diseases transmitted by infected humans.”
