Democrats’ Superlawyer Elias Leads Litigation Fighting Trump’s Buyout of Feds

An organization run by veteran Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias is representing federal unions in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the Trump administration’s buyout of federal employees.

U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, handed the group a short-term victory on Thursday, extending the Feb. 6 deadline to accept a Trump administration buyout to resign now and receive pay and benefits until the end of September. The extension stretched the deadline to Feb. 10, when another hearing is scheduled to examine the legality of the buyout offer.

Elias is the chairman of the board of Democracy Forward, which is representing two federal employee unions—the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Association of Government Employees—as well as two nonfederal unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the American Federation of Teachers—in the lawsuit. 

The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit on Tuesday and filed a motion for a temporary restraining order on Wednesday. 

They claim in the lawsuit that the deadline is arbitrary and asked the court to pause it until the government can explain a policy that is lawful. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke about the litigation at about the same time the ruling came out, saying that about 40,000 federal employees had by then already accepted the buyout. 

“We encourage federal workers in this city to accept the very generous offer,” Leavitt told reporters. “They don’t want to come into the office. If they want to rip the American people off, then they’re welcome to take this buyout, and we’ll find highly qualified people.”

Democracy Forward did not respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal on Thursday. 

As noted in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” Elias is among lawyers on the Left who have sued to stop election reform laws, such as requiring voter ID and updating voter registration data. Elias has also been a star lawyer for the Democratic Party and was the general counsel to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, a role in which he hired the Fusion GPS opposition research firm that was tied to the debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy dossier. 

Elias previously worked for the influential law firm Perkins Coie and has been involved in litigation of many high-profile close election contests in recent decades, most recently trying to flip the 2024 Pennsylvania Senate race in favor of the Democratic incumbent, Bob Casey. In 2018, Elias tried to help another defeated Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, keep his seat. Those efforts were both unsuccessful. 

Previous efforts included the recount in the 2008 Senate race in Minnesota that dragged on for about six months and was decided by fewer than 400 votes in favor of Democrat Al Franken, and the 2000 Senate campaign in Washington decided by fewer than 3,000 votes in which Democrat Maria Cantwell emerged victorious. 

Democracy Forward, founded in 2017 to oppose Trump administration policies in his first term, was previously among the liberal nonprofit groups that sued over Trump’s federal hiring freeze. Other board members include Sam-Oliker Friedland, the executive director of the Institute for Responsive Government, an organization that was financially sponsored by the New Venture Fund, a 501(c)3 nonprofit under the Arabella Advisors network. Friedland is also the chief counsel for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, which has also been financially sponsored by the New Venture Fund. 

Another Democracy Forward board member is Mindy Myers, who previously served as chief of staff for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman is a former general counsel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The Elias group is also a member of a coalition of organizations called Civil Service Strong, which includes unions and litigation advocacy groups. While it lists coalition members, the Civil Service Strong website says “A Project of Democracy Forward.”

Other member organizations of Civil Service Strong are plaintiffs in the case, the AFGE, AFSCME, and the AFT. The coalition also includes the National Federation of Federal Employees. 

Civil Service Strong also includes left-leaning watchdog groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which helped lead an unsuccessful lawsuit in Colorado to remove Donald Trump from that state’s 2024 presidential election ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court sided with CREW, but the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Trump’s favor. Two other left-leaning groups in the coalition are the State Democracy Fund and Protect Democracy. 

Additionally, two whistleblower advocacy groups, the Government Accountability Project and the Project on Government Oversight, are part of Civil Service Strong. 

The Office of Personnel Management sent a Jan. 28 email to about 2 million federal employees outlining that the new Trump administration expected employees to work in the office and not remotely, increased standards of conduct, and warning of potential downsizing. Employees were given the chance to reply “resign” by Feb. 6 to get full pay and benefits until the end of the fiscal year, or risk the potential elimination of their job. 

A 62% majority of Americans approve of the buyout, while about one-third opposed it because they thought it was too generous. The Trump administration projects the buyouts could save $100 billion in the long term.

“Civil service members deserve more than one-sided ultimatums and misleading schemes,” Perryman, the Democracy Forward president, said in a public statement. “Our team is proud to represent these unions that have been at the forefront of Trump’s attacks on our civil service, and we will continue to urge the court to act swiftly to examine unlawful ultimatums and protect our federal employees.”