A federal judge lifted the “pause,” he had imposed upon the Trump administration. He enforced its deadline of February 6, 2019, for participation in the “Fork in the Road buyout plan.” The four unions’ claims were thrown out by the five-page Federal District Court order of Clinton appointee George A. O’Toole, Jr., of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
It was mostly stupid but there were some funny parts.
Judge O’Boyle found that none of the plaintiffs [shocked] had standing to bring a lawsuit to stop the buyout because they’d not suffered any harm. The majority of court cases filed against the Trump administration would be resolved in less than five minutes if the judges took “standing” more seriously. The unions claimed that they suffered harm as a result of having to spend money and time trying to stop the purchase when this could have been used for other union activities, including criminal ones. Judge O’Boyle said the plaintiffs can’t “spend their way into standing, neither can the plaintiffs, in this case, establish standing by choosing to divert resources towards “responding to tremendous uncertainty created by OPM’s actions” and away from other union priorities.”
The nature of the complaint was the bigger picture.
Second, this Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to consider the plaintiffs’ pleaded claims. While not binding on this Court, the decision in Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Emps., AFL-CIO v. Trump (“AFGE”) is instructive. 929 F.3d 748 (D.C. Cir. 2019). In that case, the court held that the plaintiff-unions’ claims fell within the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute’s (“FSL-MRS”) scheme and therefore the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. Id. at 754.
The unions will have to exhaust all appeals with the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Federal agency before they can go to federal court.
The buyout has attracted 60,000 federal workers, and the recent events will likely add to that number.