Government lawyers sought Tuesday to put hundreds—if not thousands—of civil cases on hold, while regulatory agencies went dark and one-third of the employees of the District of Columbia’s federally funded local court system were furloughed.
Attorney General Eric Holder called the shutdown, the first in nearly 18 years, “unnecessary and harmful,” in an email to DOJ employees. Lawyers in the Civil Division—DOJ’s largest litigating component—bore the brunt of furloughs, while criminal litigation continued without interruption.
