For the first time in nearly a decade, the executive branch this past spring opened a register to applications for administrative law judge positions. Within three days of posting the announcement on the government jobs Web site, the opening closed, having drawn a targeted 1,250 applicants. Was it long pent-up demand or something not quite proper that prompted the application onslaught?
The latter, charges the Association of Administrative Law Judges, a union of ALJs, in a federal lawsuit filed this summer. The suit contends one or more federal agencies received advance notice of the vacancy announcement and shared that information with its own attorneys, and, as a result, those agency attorneys received preferential treatment over other qualified attorneys in private practice. Association of Administrative Law Judges v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, No. 07-0711. ...
"There is a sense of antagonism between [the Office of Personnel Management] and ALJs, at least from the ALJs' view," said a longtime ALJ. "They see an institution historically required to manage and protect ALJs, which now is really doing neither or not doing it very well."
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