Washington, DC — The Trump administration’s practice of placing thousands of federal employees on extended, involuntary, paid administrative leave is illegal, according to a legal filing today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The filing demands that the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) advise federal agencies that open-ended mass involuntary leave be ended immediately and that civil servants be returned to active duty. Many tens of thousands of such employees are now being paid not to work, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Today’s OSC filing supplements a pending PEER complaint on behalf of displaced U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staffers in its environmental justice office who have been on administrative leave for four months. OSC’s mission includes protecting civil servants against illegal actions that their agencies take against them.

In the Administrative Leave Act of 2016, Congress reined in abuses of administrative leave by limiting its use to no more than 10 workdays in any calendar year. Instead, under Trump, agencies have been imposing sweeping and unlimited leave on tens of thousands of employees.

“The law is clear – civil servants may not be summarily cast into limbo; we will use every opportunity to return them to active-duty status,” pledged PEER Senior Counsel Peter Jenkins, pointing out that under Trump it has become routine to sideline staff with no notice except perhaps a few hours to gather belongings and say teary goodbyes to longtime colleagues. “This mass idling of public servants is an utterly illegal waste of federal funds which must stop.”

The Office of Personnel Management adopted regulations required under the Administrative Leave Act. Under Trump, however, OPM is pushing the practice far beyond what Congress provided for. A separate legal analysis published in Government Executive on May 23^rd by a Stanford scholar concurs with PEER’s analysis.

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See cover letter to OSC

Read the PEER legal memorandum

Examine Stanford scholar’s analysis of illegal administrative leave

PEER’s prior estimate of Feds on paid leave

Trace PEER litigation to enforce administrative leave limits