SCOTUS Declines Tyson Foods' Petition to Hear COVID-19 Death Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has declined to hear Tyson Foods’ arguments about why federal judges should oversee lawsuits tied to the deaths of workers at its plants caused by COVID-19, including its nearly 2,800-worker pork processing plant in Waterloo, the Des Moines Register reports.

The court on Tuesday denied Tyson’s petition to review the decision of lower court judges, who ruled in multiple cases that Tyson employees can sue the company in state-level courts.

Tyson argued those cases should go before federal courts instead of local judges and juries because President Donald Trump’s administration ordered food processing plants to stay open in the first months of the pandemic, the article notes.

U.S. District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals judges in previous rulings on the wrongful death cases said the administration’s statements didn’t protect the company from liability. Trump's executive order instructed the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to take "all appropriate action" in order to keep the country's meat and chicken processing plants open during the pandemic, but claims this did not prohibit them from temporarily closing their plants, the Des Moines Register reports.