US courts set to run out of money, begin furloughs as shutdown lingers

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Source: Reuters

(Reuters) -The U.S. federal court system starting on Monday will begin curtailing non-essential functions and furloughing some employees after exhausting what funds it had left to sustain paid operations during the U.S. government shutdown.

The announcement, in a Thursday internal memo reviewed by Reuters, means the federal judiciary will for the first time in nearly three decades be forced to send some of its over 33,000 employees home and require others to work without a paycheck after Congress failed to pass legislation keeping the courts and the rest of the government funded.

The shutdown has already caused widespread delays in civil lawsuits involving federal agencies, as many of their employees have been furloughed. However, judges overseeing numerous legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s policies have frequently denied government requests to pause those cases.

Unlike executive branch agencies operating under Trump’s purview, the judiciary had after the government shutdown that began on October 1 been able to sustain its paid operations for a few weeks by using fees and other funds not dependent on Congress authorizing new spending.

But tight budgets in recent years meant the judiciary entered the shutdown with less cash available than it had during a 2019 shutdown in Trump’s first term in office, during which the courts sustained paid operations for the full five weeks. Funding was, as a result, projected to be exhausted on Friday.

Courts will remain open, and judges and Supreme Court justices will still get paid, thanks to a bar in the U.S. Constitution against a diminution in their pay. Officials in various district courts said they had been informed they could continue paying jurors, at least for now.

Read more: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/us-courts-set-to-run-out-of-money-begin-furloughs-as-shutdown-lingers-4295105