Employee Survival Guide® - S6 Ep137: What Does the Government Shutdown Mean for Your Employment Case?

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Comment on the Show by Sending Mark a Text Message.When Washington goes dark, your employment case enters a gray zone where agencies stall, courts keep moving, and legal deadlines rarely pause. We unpack the real-world consequences of a federal shutdown on discrimination claims, EEOC investigations, MSPB filings, and federal court practice—then map out the steps that actually protect your rights when the phones go silent.We start with what truly closes and what keeps running. The EEOC pares down to a skeleton crew, investigations and hearings halt, and communication becomes sparse. Federal tribunals like the MSPB automatically extend deadlines by the length of the lapse, but those extensions don’t revive expired dates. Federal courts, by contrast, remain open on non-appropriated funds, so filings and schedules usually continue unless a specific judge issues an order. That split reality turns timing into strategy—and makes documentation your lifeline.Drawing lessons from the 2018–2019 shutdown, we explain how backlogs form fast and linger for months, why long lapses push more workers to file directly in federal court, and how judges view “delay versus forgiveness.” Equitable tolling can save a claim when agency doors are locked, but only if you can prove diligent attempts to comply and a genuine barrier to filing. We outline what to save—portal screenshots, certified mail receipts, emails, and submission logs—and when to act. Private-sector workers should assume the 300-day charge deadline and 90-day right-to-sue clock keep running. Federal employees must still contact an EEO counselor within 45 days, even if offices are quiet.Finally, we share the practical playbook we use in our own cases: file through every available channel, verify each attempt, monitor dockets daily, proceed on schedule in PACER unless a judge says otherwise, and build a contemporaneous record of obstacles and efforts. Shutdowns create uncertainty, not immunity. Subscribe, share this episode with someone facing a deadline, and leave a review to help more listeners protect their claims when the government hits pause. If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.

Hey, it's Mark here, and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide, where I tell you, as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about, and a lot more. Hey, it's Mark, and welcome back. This episode today, we're talking about what does the government shutdown mean for your employment case? When Washington shuts down, justice doesn't simply pause. It stalls in uneven, confusing ways that can make or break an employment case. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EOC, pairs back to a skeleton crew. Federal sector tribunals shutter their dockets. Courts generally keep running. However, while the federal government sleeps, many legal deadlines keep moving. If you are pursuing a discrimination claim, a shutdown can threaten your procedural rights without warning.

In this episode, I'll explain how agencies and courts handle these lapses, what past shutdowns have shown, and what steps you and your employment attorney should take right now to preserve your claims. What actually closes and what doesn't during a shutdown. Under the EOC's published contingency plan, the agency suspends nearly all operations during a elapse in appropriations, investigations, and hearings are all put on hold with only limited triage for charges nearing the end of their filing window. In plain English, new progress stops until funding returns and communication may be non-existent from the agency. Federal employees get a slightly different experience through the Mayor Assistance Protection Board. By formal notice,

the agency automatically extends all filing and procedural processes. deadlines by the exact number of shutdown days. You don't have to file a motion. The clock simply moves. That automatic extension, however, does not revive any deadline that had expired before the shutdown began. Meanwhile, a federal judiciary, which I'm part of by my practice in federal court, does not close immediately. Courts will remain open using non-appropriated funds and cases and deadlines continue as scheduled, at least for a limited period. After that, individual judges may begin curtailing operations or issuing orders extending deadlines, case by case.

In short, the federal agencies may pause, but the courts keep going until it's virtually impractical to do so, which we haven't ever seen before. Lessons from prior long-term shutdowns. The 2018-19 shutdown lasting 30, to five days remains the longest in U.S. history and a cautionary tale. During that lapse, the EOC could not respond to more than 10,000 weekly inquiries, processing 15 new hundred charges or conduct mediations and hearings. When it reopened, the backlog clogged the system for months. The same pattern recurs in every lapse. The longer the shutdown, the steeper the

restart. Even after operations resume, investigators face months. of rescheduling employers wait for reopened portals and the employees risk seeing their deadlines drift into technical jeopardy. How courts are likely to handle shutdown-era employment cases. Courts are signaling that a government shutdown by itself will not excuse missed deadlines or procedural defaults. When an agency's doors are locked and filing systems are offline, equitable tolling can apply, but only if the employee can prove diligent attempts to comply. Now, you may ask what the hell is equitable tolling. It's a doctrine that courts will follow essentially that if you demonstrated that you tried everything you could to file a case with the EOC, but we're prohibited from doing so.

They'll look to see if you mailed something. If you sent something via the EEOC portal and you received proof of, et cetera, of, you know, unable to file. you would collect all that information and demonstrate to the court that you have the basis for what's called equitable tolling. Otherwise, the ordinary 300-day charge filing and 90-day right to sue clocks continue to run during the shutdown. Federal tribunals such as the MSB or the Mayor Assistance Protective Board are more forgiving, automatically extending their deadline by the length of the shutdown. But private sector litigants should expect courts to apply a case. by case approach. In short, shutdowns may justify delay, but rarely forgiveness. Most judges will preserve procedural regularity and expect the parties to build a clear record of their efforts during

the lapse. Do my filing deadlines stop? Usually no. Deadlines do not go away. For private sector workers, the Title VII SETA and ADA charge filing cases, the deadlines typically 300 days in deferral states, deferral states basically is an arrangement between the federal government and each state that produces a 300-day window. The deferral 300 days are not automatically paused by an EOC shutdown. The agency itself warns that limited staff only reviewed your deadline filings. If your deadline is approaching, you must act as if the clock is still ticking. Courts can apply equitable tolling, as discussed before, when a shutdown makes filing impossible, but judges require proof of both the diligence and an extraordinary obstacle, not mere inconvenience.

Likewise, once a right to sue letter is issued, the 90-day filing window in court continues to run. For federal employees, they must still contact the EEO counselor within 45 days. Agency to silence does not extend that requirement. Short versus long-term shutdowns. What changes for your case? If the lapse lasts only a few days or weeks, expect temporary cancellations in rescheduling, but long-term damage, but little long-term damage, courts continue operating and most deadlines remain intact. If the shutdown extends for weeks or months, however, the consequences compound. The EEOC accumulates thousands of unprocessed matters every day.

Mediations and hearings pile up, employer deadlines shift, and investigations stretch across physical years. Courts begin to see an influx of direct federal filings from workers who refuse to wait for reopened agencies. That means basically if the agency is closed and you get the notice right to sue that comes out before the shutdown, you file your lawsuit. Don't wait. The longer they shut down, the more procedural gridlock and the greater the risk, that a timely claim will be lost to bureaucratic paralysis. And we saw a bit of this during the pandemic where the courts basically shut down and didn't know what to do. The agencies were non-existent.

So it took a long time in my experience for the courts to remedy the backlog. And it was essentially quite a should show because I remember writing to my federal judge, the head judge in charge of the district, asking, you know, when the court can open? and they politely responded back saying that they're working on it. But eventually, it took a long time, maybe a year and a half for the court itself to remedy the backlog. It was a practice in patience. Best practices, how your employment attorney can file and protect your case during the shutdown. When the government shuts down, employees are represented by employment lawyers, have a crucial advantage.

Your employment attorney can continue moving the case forward, even while agencies are dark. Filing during a shutdown means creating a verifiable record of timely submission, not waiting for someone to pick up the phone. At our office, Karen Associates, we have systems in place to file EOC charges diligently on behalf of our clients, regardless of the shutdown. In active federal court cases, our employment attorneys continue filing electronically through the court's PACER system, which stays open even during the funding lapses. Unless a judge issues an extension order, we proceed on schedule.

We monitor every docket to ensure no client loses ground because of the politics and the capital. With experience employment counsel filing during a shutdown becomes a matter of proof, not access. Your attorney's documentation, portal records, postmarks, and emails, establish diligence, and preserve your rights. Even the government itself is closed. So there you have it, things that you can do during the shutdown to preserve and protect your legal interest to hopefully ensure that once the government opens or reopens, your case will continue as you had planned. I hope you found this episode interesting and talk to you soon. If you like the Employee's Survival Guide, I'd really encourage you to leave a review. We try really hard to produce information to you that's informative, that's timely that you can actually use and solve problems on your own and at your employment.

So if you like to leave a review anywhere you listen to our podcast, please do so. And leave five stars because anything less than five is really not as good, right? I'll keep it up. I'll keep up the standards up. I'll keep the information flowing at you. If you'd like to send me an email and ask me a question, I'll actually review it and post it on there. You can send it to M-C-A-R-U-I at C-A-P-C-Law.com. That's capclaw.com.