The Office of Personnel Management asked a federal judge Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the agency illegally used a new server to send mass emails to federal employees.
The initial suit, filed in the Washington, D.C. District Court by two anonymous federal employees, claims OPM — working with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency — violated the 2002 E-Government Act by bypassing a required privacy impact assessment, or PIA, before standing up the email platform.
Specifically, the lawsuit targets emails related to the Trump administration’s workforce reduction efforts, including the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation offer, claiming these were sent via the allegedly unauthorized server.
Nearly two weeks ago, an email landing in employees’ inboxes from the address hr@opm.gov told recipients that it was a “test of a new distribution and response list” and asked them to reply “YES” to it. Many workers suspected it was a phishing email and reported it to their IT departments.
A second test email went out the following day, and federal employees were later sent the resignation proposal using the same system shortly thereafter, saying they would be paid until Sept. 30 — provided they resign by Feb. 6.
OPM attorneys representing the Trump administration argue the suit misconstrues the law, contending the E-Government Act’s PIA requirement applies only to systems handling public data and not data attributed to internal employees. Despite this, OPM has now published a PIA for the system and submitted it to the court.
“This case is, accordingly, moot, and should be dismissed. Even were the case to continue, plaintiffs clearly cannot establish a likelihood of success on the merits,” they wrote in Wednesday’s filing.
The published PIA describes the Government-Wide Email System as a platform for communicating with federal employees, storing only names and government email addresses, as well as voluntary responses. It adds that the system operates entirely on federal computers and within existing Microsoft-backed government systems.
The court has rescheduled a hearing to Thursday to address the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order seeking to halt OPM’s use of the contested emailing system. The requested restraining order cited Nextgov/FCW reporting indicating that, just days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, OPM did not have the capability to send a mass email of that scale.
