Judge dismisses Amazon's lawsuit against Washington state labor agency [View all]

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit that Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) filed after being ordered to improve working conditions at its warehouses. The company will now have to undertake the improvements.

In March 2022, Washington state's Department of Labor & Industries hit Amazon with a $60,000 fine for a "willful serious violation" of safety rules at the company's flagship BFI4 warehouse in Kent and required Amazon to submit a written plan to abate future violations. Amazon has been fined a total of $81,000 by the agency from violations in warehouses in Kent, DuPont and Sumner, according to L&I records.

The Seattle tech giant appealed the fine and then in October sued the labor agency in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington. Amazon sought through its complaint to block the order, which required it to fix conditions based on the agency's recommendations, arguing that doing so would violate its 14th Amendment rights because the appeal had not been ruled upon.

L&I's March 2022 citation said Amazon's processes in its BFI4 warehouse created a "serious hazard for work-related back, shoulder, wrist and knee injuries."

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2023/03/14/judge-amazon-lawsuit-washington-dropped.html