US government employees asked a federal judge to order Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to continue borrowing to keep the government open if political talks to raise the national debt ceiling fail.

The National Association of Government Employees Inc. – a union representing 75,000 federal agency and military employees – sued President Joe Biden and Yellen Monday in an attempt to avoid the kind of government shutdown experienced in 2019, when Democratic Congressional leaders refused to fund President Donald Trump’s Mexican border wall.

Biden and congressional Republicans are locked in a staredown over raising the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit, with GOP leaders demanding promises of future spending cuts before they approve a higher ceiling. Biden has insisted on a “clean” increase, with budget talks kept separate. Biden is scheduled to meet House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders Tuesday to discuss the debt ceiling

In its lawsuit, NAGE asked that the Debt Ceiling Statute be declared unconstitutional as a violation of the separation of powers and obligation to pay America’s debts. The union claims neither Biden nor Yellen is empowered to pick and choose which bills to pay if the US faces default by failing to borrow. That’s Congress’s job, it says.

“While not challenging here in principle the controversial proposition that Congress can limit the indebtedness of the United States, plaintiff asserts that Congress may not do so without at least setting the order and priority of payments once that limit is reached, instead of leaving it to the president to do so,” NAGE’s lawyers said in a complaint in Boston federal court.

NAGE is seeking a court order preventing any layoffs, furloughs or reduction in benefits for federal workers if Congress refuses to raise the limit on how much the US can borrow to pay its bills.

The association asked that Yellen and Biden be barred from “involving or relying upon the Debt Limit Statute to defund any part of the operations of the federal government approved by Congress unless and until Congress specifically directs.”

Yellen has warned the US may run out of cash as early as June 1.

The case is National Association of Government Employees Inc. v Janet Yellen, 1:34-11991, US District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston)