An Eastern Kentucky coal operator told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court late last week that it expects to wind down its operations in September and asked to dismiss a lawsuit by former workers.
The 300 former employees of Clintwood JOD LLC sued in March, seeking 60 days of pay and benefits they say they should have received under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
The workers say they were terminated unlawfully without notification by the company, which filed for bankruptcy in March.
Clintwood’s attorneys say the workers can pursue their claims after the bankruptcy case is dismissed, though the company couldn’t pay them if they get a favorable ruling.
“The debtors have no means by which a judgment could be addressed,” the motion reads.
A hearing will be held in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Lexington on Aug. 20.
The company was sold last month at auction for $1.1 million – far less than what it owes its creditors. That includes more than $3 million to the Kentucky Treasury, $1 million to Kentucky Power and more than $1 million to Pike County and Grundy County, Virginia.
Clintwood’s bankruptcy contributed to the decline in coal jobs in Kentucky. According to the Energy and Environment Cabinet, the state was down to 3,500 coal workers in the first three months of 2026, the lowest number on record.
Of the 500 coal jobs that vanished statewide from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026, more than 400 of them were in Eastern Kentucky.
Production statewide was up just under 1%.
The sharp reduction in Kentucky coal workers coincides with an aggressive push by the Trump administration to boost domestic coal use.
Those efforts include rolling back power plant regulations, canceling tax credits for wind and solar, ordering coal plants to stay on the grid when they were slated to retire and awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants to coal plants, including a few in Kentucky.
Yet according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the amount of coal used to generate electricity fell every month from January to May compared with 2025.
The two major railroads that haul coal out of Eastern Kentucky, Norfolk Southern and CSX, reported last month their domestic coal shipments fell in the second quarter.
