Second amended complaint expands lawsuit against Los Alamos nuclear contractors
Six more former employees joined a federal lawsuit against Los Alamos cleanup contractors, bringing the case to 15 plaintiffs and widening retaliation claims.
A lawsuit over work at Los Alamos National Laboratory grew again, adding six former employees and turning a labor dispute into a wider challenge to one of the county’s most consequential federal contractors. The second amended complaint now names 15 plaintiffs and targets N3B Los Alamos, HII Nuclear, BWXT Technical Services Group, and their parent companies.
The filing was lodged June 15 in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico under case No. 1:26-cv-00112-KWR-JMR. It lists claims for False Claims Act retaliation, Section 1985(2) witness deterrence, Family and Medical Leave Act retaliation, negligence per se, wrongful retaliatory discharge, and punitive damages.
The six new plaintiffs are Dennis Broughton, Tanner Henderson, Louis Smith, Bryan Donnan, Jamarquris Dixon and Michael Archibeque. They join original plaintiffs Tashia Owen and Edward Martinez, plus Brenda Bowlby, Maria Sandoval, Jolene Garduño, Adam Barras, Alexandria Sanchez, Miles Majure-Barkley, Brian Caldwell and the others added in the first amended complaint filed May 6. The case began Jan. 20 with two former employees, then expanded once before reaching its current size.
The allegations, as described in the complaint and related reporting, center on 2025 terminations that the plaintiffs say followed complaints about N3B’s compliance with federal acquisition, contracting, employment, and environment, safety and health standards. The plaintiffs also tie the dismissals to a broader federal review of N3B’s work, including whether the contractor properly bid and billed the Department of Energy under the legacy cleanup contract.
N3B declined to comment on the expanded lawsuit. That silence leaves the filing as the main public account of a dispute that touches both worker protections and the integrity of cleanup operations at Los Alamos.
The stakes are larger than a private personnel fight. DOE identifies N3B as the legacy cleanup contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory under contract 89303318CEM000007, and the agency’s contract page shows award-fee scorecards running from fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2025. DOE says the cleanup mission is to investigate and remediate hazardous chemical and radioactive contamination from past LANL operations at former buildings, hillsides, canyon bottoms and old landfills.
N3B says it is owned by HII Nuclear and BWX Technologies, manages a $2.1 billion, 10-year Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract, and has served as the lab’s legacy cleanup contractor since 2018 after a two-year extension from DOE. The agency said in December 2024 that N3B earned more than $13.5 million, or 79 percent, of the available fee for fiscal 2024, while completing the Middle DP Road cleanup and excavating more than 5,917 cubic yards of waste and debris for disposal.
For Los Alamos County, that means the case is unfolding inside a mission that DOE says depends on local residents, officials, pueblo communities, agencies, NGOs, the workforce and the public. As the litigation grows, it raises a broader question for a community built around federal work: whether the complaint reflects an isolated dispute or a pattern that could shape trust in the contractors cleaning up the Lab’s legacy hazards.
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