The White House says federal workers furloughed during the government shutdown are not guaranteed to be paid for the forced time off, according to a report.
The draft of a White House memo, described by Axios, asserts that the estimated 750,000 federal employees who have been furloughed after the lapse in federal funding last week wouldn’t be entitled to back pay once the shutdown ends – going against a 2019 law calling for them to be reimbursed.
An administration official confirmed the memo’s contents to The Independent.
“This would not have happened if Democrats voted for the clean [continuing resolution],” a senior administration official told the outlet.
The last government shutdown occurred in 2019 during the first Trump administration and lasted for a record 35 days. Then, President Donald Trump signed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which requires furloughed workers to be paid “at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations ends.”
Similarly, September 2025 guidance from the Office of Personnel Management states that furloughed employees will get paid once the shutdown ends. “After the lapse in appropriations has ended, employees who were furloughed as the result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods,” the guidance says.
This memo, however, suggests that the act is “deficient” because it was amended nine days after it went into effect, a source told Axios. That means not all employees might get back pay.
A senior White House official interpreted the new memo’s stance, summarizing to the outlet: “Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke about this “new legal analysis” and how it could turn up the pressure on Democrats, whom Republicans — as well as official White House accounts — have blamed for the shutdown.
“It is true that in previous shutdowns, many or most furloughed employees have been paid for the time they were furloughed. But there is new legal analysis — I don’t know the details…but there are some legal analysts who are saying that might not be appropriate or necessary in terms of the law requiring that back pay be provided,” Johnson said at a Tuesday press conference.
“If that is true, that should turn up the urgency that should turn up the urgency and the necessity of the Democrats doing the right thing here,” he added.
Johnson later clarified: “I hope that the furloughed workers receive backpay, of course,” adding the president believes that as well.
Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees — the largest federal employee union — denounced this interpretation.
“The frivolous argument that federal employees are not guaranteed backpay under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act is an obvious misinterpretation of the law. It is also inconsistent with the Trump administration’s own guidance from mere days ago, which clearly and correctly states that furloughed employees will receive retroactive pay for the time they were out of work as quickly as possible once the shutdown is over,” Kelley told The Independent in a statement.
“As we’ve said before, the livelihoods of the patriotic Americans serving their country in the federal government are not bargaining chips in a political game. It’s long past time for these attacks on federal employees to stop and for Congress to come together, resolve their differences, and end this shutdown.”
Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray blasted the Trump administration’s legal analysis.
“The letter of the law is as plain as can be—federal workers, including furloughed workers, are entitled to their backpay following a shutdown,” she wrote on X, calling the move “another baseless attempt to try and scare & intimidate workers by an administration run by crooks and cowards.”
On Monday, six days into the shutdown, Trump suggested he would work with Democrats, who have demanded health care subsidies — a claim that several prominent Congressional Democrats have disputed.
“We have a negotiation going on right now with the Democrats that could lead to very good things,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “And I’m talking about good things with regard to health care.”
New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, told reporters: “Trump’s claim isn’t true, but if he’s finally ready to work with Democrats, we’ll be at the table.”
