Plaintiffs call for temporary restraining order in OPM email server lawsuit

The two federal employees who last week sued the Office of Personnel Management for allegedly connecting an unauthorized commercial server to the agency’s network to send mass email blasts to the federal workforce are now asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order to immediately take the server offline while the case proceeds.

Represented by counsel Kel McClanahan, the federal workers — using pseudonyms Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 to protect against retaliation — filed an emergency motion Tuesday for a restraining order in the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The motion largely rehashes the claims made in the plaintiffs’ initial complaint, which accuses OPM, at the orders of special government employee Elon Musk — who is running President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency,  composed of the tech billionaire’s associates whose official roles and clearance status are unclear — of sidestepping federal law by setting up the server to support mass emails to the entire federal workforce without conducting a privacy impact assessment. 

The lawsuit also cites reports that claim the server is “retaining information about every employee of the U.S. Executive Branch” or potentially doing so through systems linked to it.

OPM has used the server to send several test emails to workers across the government as well as the administration’s now infamous “Fork in the Road” email, in which it offered deferred resignations to slash the federal workforce, and several FAQ follow-ups. 

The plaintiffs also claim that the server lacks proper federal security controls because it was established hurriedly, outside of federal procurement regulations and without any official oversight.

The new motion stresses the urgency of the court taking swift action on the matter because the Trump administration has given federal workers a Feb. 6 deadline to respond to the deferred resignation email. The plaintiffs presume that if the server is left operational, it will continue to collect personally identifiable information on any federal workers who respond to the previous emails and put that data at risk of compromise.

McClanahan, representing the plaintiffs, also appeared before the court Tuesday to argue for the case to proceed with the plaintiffs using pseudonyms for their safety, fearing the possibility of physical retaliation, such as “swatting” against them and their families. Chief Judge James E. Boasberg said he’d issue a written order on that matter sometime later in the day.

Meanwhile, a pair of House Democrats sent a letter Tuesday asking acting OPM Director Charles Ezell for documents, information, and a briefing about the OPM server by Feb. 18. In the letter, Reps. Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Shontel Brown of Ohio call for a variety of technical details about the email operation and any IT equipment used to support it, including details on how it was procured, the required privacy assessments, authorizations to operate, and “a list of the individuals who installed and/or accessed the equipment, including whether they were OPM employees at the time of their installation/access of the equipment,” among other things.

“At best, the Trump Administration’s actions at OPM to date demonstrate gross negligence, severe incompetence, and a chaotic disregard for the security of our government data and the countless services it enables our agencies to provide to the public,” states the letter. “At worst, we fear that Trump Administration officials know full well that their actions threaten to break our government and put our citizens at risk of foreign adversaries like China and Russia gaining access to our sensitive data.”