About 25,000 federal workers deemed essential during the 2013 partial government shutdown are entitled to be paid twice for work they performed during a five-day period, a federal judge found this week.

The workers were not paid on time for work at the beginning of the 16-day shutdown, though they were given the back pay when the political crisis was resolved.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, under which the workers sued, entitles government workers to the damages if they aren’t paid on time.

Government attorneys unsuccessfully pointed to a different law, the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits spending of money without congressional authorization, and argued at a minimum the government should not have to pay damages because of a good-faith belief about the ADA's implications.

But U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith found the workers were entitled to on-time payment under the FLSA and that the conflicting laws didn't allow the government off the hook.

“Because the government admittedly took no steps to determine its obligations under the FLSA during the 2013 shutdown, no disputed and material facts exist, and the court cannot find that it acted in good faith,” Campbell-Smith ruled.

It’s not immediately clear if the Justice Department will appeal, or how much money the government may have to pay to workers who joined the lawsuit, which originally was filed on behalf of five Bureau of Prisons employees.

Heidi Burakiewicz, an attorney for the workers, says about 200,000 workers missed out on receiving damages because they did not respond to paperwork mailed in 2015. An initial estimate of more than 1 million potential plaintiffs proved high, as many were in the military and paid on time, she says.

“Under the FLSA you have to opt into the case, and unfortunately opt-in rates are very low,” she says. “But I’m not aware of any FLSA case in which over 25,000 have opted in. It’s still a very large case.”

Damages will vary from worker to worker, all of whom already were paid their regular wage after Congress ended the shutdown and authorized back pay for the five-day window.

Any worker who earned overtime is entitled to be paid that amount for a second time, Burakiewicz says. Damages for work up to a standard 40-hour week will be pegged to the minimum wage, she says.

The judge ordered both sides to work toward calculating damages and to report back next month.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling, which was issued Monday but escaped public notice until a Thursday press release.

“I think this ruling is tremendous in the sense that there have been shutdowns before and employees have not filed a lawsuit like this before,” Burakiewicz says. “In our minds, this is a confirmation that the government mistreated its employees. … They just decided these employees have to come to work and we aren’t paying them.”

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Though they did receive back pay fairly quickly, some low-wage workers living paycheck-to-paycheck said the delay caused them hardships, making them juggle bills and request extra time from creditors.

“A lot of these employees suffered greatly because of it. We heard so many sad stories from people with families who had medical problems," Burakiewicz says. "We are talking about people who work in very dangerous federal prisons, we’re talking about federal police, federal firefighters, people at Social Security who process payments. Our country cannot survive without these federal employees.”