Nearly 10,000 federal employees have joined a lawsuit against the government for damages supposedly incurred during the 2013 government shutdown, when their paychecks were delayed by two weeks.
A case originally brought in October 2013 by five Bureau of Prisons employees has mushroomed into a potentially enormous legal battle as hundreds of thousands of federal workers respond to invitations from the Department of Justice to join the suit this week. There are 2.1 million career federal civil servants.
Heidi Burakiewicz, an attorney at Mehri & Skalet, the law firm representing the workers, told the Washington Examiner that federal employees need only submit a form requesting to join the case risk-free in order to be eligible to receive compensation.
“I honestly can’t think of a valid reason why they wouldn’t,” Burakiewicz said. She said the case, brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act, would mark “the first lawsuit of its kind against the federal government.”
At the state level, government workers prevailed against California after being forced to work during the 1992 budget impasse, Burakiewicz said.
“People are just as upset now as they were in 2013 about the shutdown, especially employees of the Department of Homeland Security, who almost went through it again,” Burakiewicz said, referring to the congressional gridlock over immigration funding that nearly shuttered the agency earlier this month.
But critics deride the litigation, including Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and a former Justice Department attorney, who called it “ridiculous.”
“This is an unprecedented lawsuit,” said Spakovsky, who is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “These folks were paid in full within two weeks, and I just don’t see what damages, if any, they could possibly show for that.”
Spakovsky said the case could cost the government “a tremendous amount of money” if it were successful, but he noted a victory for the employees seems unlikely.
“Even if a lower court mistakenly granted a judgement in favor of these employees, I think it would get overturned in the appellate courts,” he said.
The essential fact underlying the case is that federal workers don’t have a right to payments that Congress hasn’t appropriated to them. That means they aren’t entitled to damages, Spakovsky said.
But David Williams, president of Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said he expects the case to move forward, given the likelihood that there is legal authority to pursue damages.
Williams criticized what he saw as a “frivolous lawsuit” that could potentially cost the government tens of millions.
“This is an insult to taxpayers and common sense,” he said. “I hope federal employees see this really isn’t the right thing to do, that even though they were inconvenienced, they still got their full pay.”
Federal workers have until June 29th to join the case as plaintiffs.
