• With federal lawyers furloughed, the shutdown is delaying lawsuit over shutdown
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shutdown-lawsuit/with-federal-lawyers-furloughed-court-delays-suit-over-u-s-shutdown-idUSKCN1PA30Y?utm_source=reddit.com NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawsuit filed by a federal employees’ union over the current U.S. government shutdown cannot move forward because the Justice Department lawyers who defend the government have been ordered not to come to work, a judge said on Tuesday. U.S. Court of Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith said she appreciated the irony of the situation but “neither the court nor the attorneys at the Department of Justice has the authority to change the present circumstances,” she wrote. The American Federation of Government Employee, the largest federal employee union, sued the government in December, arguing that requiring border patrol and transportation security agents, air traffic controllers, and other employees to work without pay violates federal wage law. As it has in other cases since the shutdown began on Dec. 22, the Justice Department on Tuesday asked the court to stay the case because its lawyers are not allowed to work during the shutdown, even on a voluntary basis, with a few rare exceptions. The union and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If legal challenge is out as a potential recourse, then what are these workers seriously to do?
Striking is illegal as well and grounds for termination.
None. The only option is to hope the GOP get their head out of their fucking ass and McConnell stops sucking dick enough to pass a spending bill. They could end it at any moment they do choose, but they’ve chosen this hill to die on. And I hope they do.
can't sue the government if there is no government
Absolutely fucking ridiculous. The worst part is that odds are there's at the very least one government worker blaming the Democrats for taking their livelihood. When is this shit going to end?
Federal judges need to say 'fuck it' and just give the complainants the win. It'd set an amazing precedent.
And also a potentially disastrous one. The rule of law depends on the consideration of arguments and evidence. If the process goes out the window, the rule of law goes out with it.
There needs to be major wage reform for federal workers in the future. Protected wages for up to a year after shutdown for all employees would be nice. Congress/exec shouldnt have the power to refuse to pay employees and demand they work for free.
Or end shutdowns. The whole concept of the shutdown started in 1976 and they didn't happen before that.
The government simply isn't allowed to spend money; nothing can change that until the shutdown is lifted. What you're suggesting is the exact opposite of what's needed. We don't want shutdowns to be comfortable for anyone. Better to resolve the problem altogether than try to make it more tenable with stopgap measures like this.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211451/b164ae30-d0c7-464d-ba0f-dcb574c86f9d/Y4nyUmN.jpg Why does this seem like a major oversight?
This is a terrible idea and you should feel bad for proposing it.
congress needs to pass a bill after this that stipulates essential workers get paid in a shutdown.
Let's put it like this, then. Let the judges give the admin an ultimatum: Send justice department lawyers to make arguments within a certain time-frame, or it will be treated as if the government refuses to dispute the suit, and the claimants will be granted whatever damages they seek. Light a fire under the asses of the Trump admin - that's justice. Not letting them get away with holding the country hostage.
I bet these fuckers would haul ass on a resolution if their paychecks were being held from them.
Pretty much everything Trump has been doing gives a whole new meaning to "major oversight". I wasn't exactly educated well enough on every individual president to remember, but this feels like Trump has got a man on-hand to tell him every loophole he can abuse and every method he can take to break the system to his advantage so that no one can fight back against him.
i think the current administration has shown 0 care for the rule of law
I mean, yeah It's called the GOP
If the rule of law leads to shit like this is it even worth keeping? Obviously lock up murderers and rapists, but laws aren't an inherent good to society.
Honestly it's pretty understandable given the staggering amount of dysfunction under the Trump administration. The problem is that however tempting extraordinary measures might seem in the moment, however gratifying the short-term benefit, they usually have a way of coming back to haunt us. That's why it's so important to stick to our moral principles and uphold the rule of law, even during crises when doing so might seem counterintuitive. That would be an improvement, but it could still be abused. Imagine that you are Donald Trump. You use your veto authority to force a government shutdown. During this time, a fossil fuel company "coincidentally" files a lawsuit against an inconvenient EPA regulation. With federal courts adjourned due to lack of funding, the government forfeits thee case and the regulation is overturned.
The government has been subpoenaed and failed to respond to the summons. Pretty normal precedent. For citizens that is a great way to lose a case or go to jail depending on what court issued the summons. If, for instance, a police officer issues a traffic ticket, it isn't actually a traffic ticket. It is a notice to appear. You are given the option to avoid appearing by simply paying a fine. If you chose to NOT pay the fine and instead appear in court, then the police officer is issued a summons. If he fails to appear, then you generally win by default. If the government doesn't show up to court, you win. The precedent already exists. This IS the rule of law. Everyone is subject to it. Both sides.
Can anybody explain to me why they all haven't quit by now? Like, out of survival? I've had to quit a job for not being paid before and it sucks, but you gotta do what you gotta do in order to keep your bills paid.
There might be some stupid stipulation like "you won't get back-pay if you quit" or something shady like that. But that would be interesting to see them all up and quit. What're they going to do, put an ad in the paper for a job that has no determined payday? I'll bet people will be fighting hand-over-fist for those jobs.
Who decides who gets "locked up"? Do we lock up thieves? What about someone who assaults another person? What if the attacker has a justification for attacking that other person? How do we decide how this person is treated? How do we decide how anybody is treated? What conditions are acceptable for prisoners? How long do we lock these people up for? What about pettier crimes that don't justify jailtime but still harm society? If there's no laws, do we just let megacorporations sell cigarettes to elementary school students? No laws means no regulations for working conditions, carbon emissions, environmental protection. There are deep flaws in our justice system but it sounds like you haven't thought this through at all. With no consistent set of rules that people are expected to follow it sounds like you're advocating for some kind of free for all where anybody can exploit anybody. If there's some system out there that keeps order and protects citizens without a set of consistent rules and consequences for them that works on the scale of cities and nations, I'd be extremely interested in hearing what it is.
Depending on what organization you are a part of, it's mostly this.
reports are that the Trump admin has come up with quite a wide ranging definition of "essential to safety of people" which they're using to bring back any government worker involved with policy projects such as oil leases or crop subsidies. They're raiding every pot of money left in the government to justify payment for these services as well. The consensus is that they will almost certainly be investigated by the GAO and other ethics offices for this, that's only going to be a rebuke because this is coming from the top.
But your hypothetical situation has absolutely zero in common with this one. For one thing, courts stay open during a government shutdown. And this isn't an issue with courts staying open, it's about the Trump admin demanding the lawsuit be postponed indefinitely because they came up with some bullshit excuse to avoid sending their lawyers to defend themselves. If Trump can order tens of thousands of people back to work without pay, you're telling me it's unreasonable for his administration to send a couple of lawyers to answer the suit? Furthermore, in your hypothetical situation, how the hell would EPA regs be struck down without a court open to make the ruling in the first place? It makes no sense whatsoever.
Yeah, I shouldn't have said it the way I did, I don't actually believe in getting rid of the rule of law. But there is this weird fetishization of legality even when every party involved believes something to be unethical.
ya and its hard to feel great about it when one side is so unconcerned with even appearing above board. Like the GOP does not care about anything regarding ethics if they are winning, and its so infuriating that they let trump get away with stuff of dubious legality like forcing non essential workers back to work in a shutdown, just because its politically expedient to do so. This whole shutdown is because the gop senate will not move until trump makes up his mind, and every day they run around from camera to camera shouting about how its Nancy Pelosci's fault
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