WEST VIRGINIA (LOOTPRESS) – A West Virginia coal miner is suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., over the suspension of a critical health program designed to protect miners from black lung disease.
Harry Wiley, who suffers from black lung, filed the lawsuit in April in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. On Wednesday, his attorneys asked Judge Irene Berger to issue a preliminary injunction that would force HHS to immediately reinstate the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, which was quietly shut down last month.
The program, operated under the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), allows miners diagnosed with black lung to apply for “Part 90” job transfers—moving them to less dusty areas of the mine to slow the progression of the disease. Wiley applied for such a transfer after his diagnosis, but with the program shuttered, his application is in limbo.
Wiley’s legal team argued the federal government had no clear plan to continue the program, leaving miners like him at greater risk of worsening health. “We know that intervention works,” testified Dr. Scott Laney, a NIOSH epidemiologist based in Morgantown. “Less exposure to dust saves lives. The science is clear.”
Laney, who was briefly called back to work last week only to be placed back on leave days later, said the program’s shutdown also halted vital research, left no one in charge of sensitive medical data, and dismantled an infrastructure no other agency or country replicates. “There is no plan, no leadership, and no one else in the world does what we do,” he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Westfall, representing the government, said the miner health program would eventually resume under a new entity called the Administration for a Healthy America. But when pressed in court, he presented only a press release and a fact sheet that mentioned the new agency—neither of which directly referenced the coal worker health program.
Wiley’s attorneys and multiple expert witnesses said those materials were vague and failed to show any concrete steps to restore the program. “No one has resumed processing applications. The field work is gone. There is no mobile lab,” said Anita Wolf, a retired public health analyst and former coordinator of the coal health program.
Wolf, whose father died of black lung, testified emotionally about the human cost. “I’ve seen miners so sick they had to be carried into our mobile labs. I watched my father die from this. It’s not a pretty sight.”
Since HHS placed the NIOSH coal surveillance team on administrative leave and issued termination notices, screenings have stopped, applications are frozen, and miners face increased health risks. For Wiley, who’s still waiting on his job transfer, time may be running out.
A decision on the injunction is pending. If granted, it could compel the federal government to restart the black lung monitoring program before more lives are put at risk.
