With the Trump-initiated government shutdown still going strong as it heads towards a second week without a resolution, it is not just those federal employees who have been furloughed or who are working without pay because they were deemed “essential” who are getting increasingly angry.
Even those members of the government who are only indirectly affected are beginning to lose their patience as well.
Take Judge Joseph R. Goodwin of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of West Virginia. Faced with a petition for a General Order which would require him to postpone any civil cases that the Department of Justice was involved with due to the “lapse of Congressional appropriations funding,” Judge Goodwin rebelled and refused to hold the government to a different standard than any other litigants before his court.
Zoe Tillman, a reporter on legal and justice matters for BuzzFeed News, posted the Judge’s defiant order exempting any civil cases being tried before him from the District’s accommodation to the Justice Department over their funding woes and refusing to stay the cases simply because of the government’s inability to pay their legal staff.
This is QUITE the order from a fed judge in West Virginia. The court agreed to put civil cases on hold that involve DOJ, given the shutdown. Judge Joseph Goodwin was … not a fan, and said DOJ won't get special treatment before him just because the govt is fighting with itself pic.twitter.com/4yOU291L02
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) January 2, 2019
Judge Goodwin makes the compelling argument that if the shoe was on the other foot, the opposing party in the litigation would not be offered any accommodation to delay their trial, so, therefore, neither should the Justice Department, in a fair invocation of the “good for the goose, good for the gander” principle of justice.
To put this in context: Most judges have been agreeing to requests by DOJ to stay civil litigation as long as there's a shutdown. Goodwin's order has echoes of what we saw in 2013, which was judges bristling at a political fight tying up the business of the courts
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) January 2, 2019
Judge Goodwin’s principled stance is a bold statement in the conservative and tradition-bound world of jurisprudence, but a necessary assertion of the judicial branch’s co-equal status with the legislative and executive branches of government under the Constitution.
The most interesting aspect of the judge’s order will come if and when the first case that the Justice Department has scheduled on the docket comes up before Trump’s shutdown is over. Will the Justice Department simply fail to show up to defend their position and forfeit their case? Or will they somehow find an “essential” employee to try the case?
Hopefully for everyone involved, the shutdown will be over before we find out whether Judge Goodwin will stand by his frustrated decision to penalize the DOJ for the internal government fiscal battles. If not, those named in the civil suits may have an unexpectedly easy defense ahead of them.