Sometimes someone with a lot of litigation experience can be a useful thing.
New lawsuit: Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Department of Interior (D. D.C.)
“The Center Biological Diversity sued five cabinet-level agencies today seeking to stop the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its DOGE teams from taking further actions against multiple environmental agencies until each team fully complies with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
This is the first lawsuit challenging DOGE’s efforts to eviscerate the agencies charged with protecting the environment, natural resources and wildlife.Today’s lawsuit aims to protect the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service within the Department of the Interior; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the Department of Commerce; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Forest Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service within the Department of Agriculture; and the Federal Aviation Administration within the Department of Transportation.
President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency requires each federal agency to implement so-called DOGE teams. Because these teams likely include a mix of full-time, part-time, volunteer and special government employees (the designation given to Musk) they must comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act. To date, no agency has even announced its intention to comply with this important transparency law, which applies to advisory committees established by the president.”
As the historical record clearly shows, Donald Trump makes non-compliance with laws and regulations a profession.
Way to go, CBD!
Interesting approach CBD is taking here – attacking the DOGE teams rather than DOGE itself.
So the solution for DOGE would be to make sure that all its employees are some kind of federal hire. Which doesn’t seem difficult. Not sure I understand this approach.
Unless the argument is that some federal hires count more than others, and if you don’t have the right proportions, your team doesn’t count as legitimately federal? And who would volunteer to do all that work?
It seems to my simple and non-legal mind that DOGE does two things… dig around and find out where the $ are going, and 2) make recommendations to the officials for improvement.
Making recommendations sounds like something the USG pays consulting groups billions for. Perhaps agencies could contract with DOGE to make recommendations for improving efficiency? It would be weird if contractors could make recommendations but employees can’t.
After all we have all these consulting contracts intended to do work to make government work better and apparently folks in the Admin are negotiation with them right now.
https://www.wsj.com/business/big-consulting-bosses-meet-with-trump-officials-to-save-contracts-8b2946f8
from the WSJ
I don’t have a good feel for litigation of advisory committee membership, but here’s a couple of things the Supreme Court had to say about contractors as members:
“In the section dealing with FACA’s range of application, the Conference Report stated: ‘The Act does not apply to persons or organizations which have contractual relationships with Federal agencies …'”
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9345074559759599763&q=%22federal+advisory+committee+act%22+contractors&hl=en&as_sdt=3,27
“But the fact about the consultant that is constant in the typical cases is that the consultant does not represent an interest of its own, or the interest of any other client, when it advises the agency that hires it. Its only obligations are to truth and its sense of what good judgment calls for, and in those respects the consultant functions just as an employee would be expected to do.” (Albeit this was a FOIA case.)
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7838728735648333478&q=%22federal+advisory+committee+act%22+contractors&hl=en&as_sdt=3,27
I guess my point was that giving advice to agencies on organizational improvement from big consulting firms does not trigger FACA, why would giving advice from an internal USG group (DOGE)(albeit possibly with volunteers) trigger it?
Maybe we’ll find out.
Also supporting the federal employees, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Organization of Chinese Americans, and Japanese American Citizens League have asked a federal court to reverse the firing of thousands of National Park Service and Forest Service workers (and other agencies, including the BLM), arguing that the government violated the Constitution when it dismissed them and other probationary federal employees last month.
https://www.backpacker.com/news-and-events/news/sierra-club-sues-to-reinstate-fired-national-park-service-forest-service-workers/
Do we have examples of any industry/economic interest groups suing over the employee dismissals?