On June 29, AFGE filed a class action lawsuit against Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Katherine Archuleta and Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour alleging that they failed to heed warnings, obey security policies, leading to one of the largest data breaches in U.S. history.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. AFGE and two individuals, Robert Crawford and Adam Dale, are represented by a legal team led by Girard Gibbs LLP, a national litigation firm representing plaintiffs in class and collective actions in state and federal courts and in arbitration matters worldwide. Girard Gibbs LLP has extensive experience with cases involving cybersecurity attacks and data breaches.
AFGE will not sit idly by while OPM fails to comply with the most basic requests for information or provide an adequate response. Even after this historic security breach, OPM has continued to use poor data security practices and inferior private-sector strategies to solve its security woes.
Since 2007, officials at OPM have been alerted to their lackluster data security policies and protocols and failed to take appropriate steps to safeguard the information. Although they were forewarned about the potential catastrophe that government employees faced, OPM’s data security got worse rather than better.
Despite putting government employees and their loved ones at significant personal and financial risk, OPM has failed to reveal the full scope of who was specifically impacted by the data breach and the extent of the information taken. Additionally, the credit monitoring services that OPM provided have not only fallen short, but actually created more potential security risks for employees.
Since the agency is unwilling to provide adequate assistance, AFGE is taking unprecedented steps to gather more information for our members and hold the agency accountable. To learn more about how AFGE has responded on behalf of its members, visit www.afge.org/DataBreach.