A federal judge has for now extended a pause on the deadline set by the Trump administration for federal workers to accept a deferred resignation offer and temporarily prohibited the government from soliciting more so-called buyouts.
The temporary restraining order announced from the bench Monday by US District Judge George O’Toole will remain in place until the judge decides whether he should indefinitely pause the offer’s deadline pending further court proceedings over the buyout program’s legality.
Eligible federal workers had previously faced an 11:59 p.m. ET deadline last Thursday to accept the offer, which will generally allow them to leave their jobs but be paid through the end of September.
But O’Toole, during a hastily scheduled hearing earlier that day, halted the deadline until late Monday to receive additional legal arguments in a case brought against the buyout program by the American Federation of Government Employees and several other unions.
O’Toole, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, is continuing that earlier extension.
During an hourlong hearing at the federal courthouse in Boston, union attorney Elena Goldstein urged the judge to extend the deadline to prevent her clients from having to use resources to provide advice to union members seeking counsel on the offer, which she called “stunningly arbitrary.”
“This is an unprecedented action taken on an unprecedented timeline that is causing irreparable harm to plaintiffs in their capacity as unions,” Goldstein said. “Absent this court’s relief, that injury will be irreparable.”
But Eric Hamilton, a Justice Department attorney defending the administration’s actions, told the judge it wouldn’t make sense to extend the deadline given the unions’ arguments that the program was causing them harm. He said those alleged harms “would only increase if the court enters a temporary restraining order that extends the program out into time. It would not mitigate that harm.”
And he defended the legality of the program, saying it was done in accordance with federal laws concerning civil servants and congressionally appropriated funds. The buyout program, he said at one point, “offers a humane off-ramp to federal government employees” who don’t want to comply with new work mandates being implemented by the Trump administration.
The lawsuit targeting the deferred resignation offer was filed a week after the message was sent to federal employees on January 28 through the administration’s new mass email system. The subject line, “Fork in the Road,” had many similarities to an email that X, then called Twitter, sent to its employees days after Elon Musk took over the company. Musk now leads Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has been tasked with shrinking the federal workforce as one of its mandates.
Attorneys for the unions have argued “the Fork Directive” is arbitrary and capricious and have asked O’Toole to order the Office of Personnel and Management “to provide an adequate legal justification and assurance of its terms.” The agency, the attorneys told the judge in court filings, “has offered no statutory basis for its unprecedented offer.”
But during this early stage of the case, the unions asked the judge for “narrower relief that would have the effect of at least temporarily defusing Defendants’ exploding offer.” Their attorneys said in court papers that the short deadline on the offer forced them to divert resources to address “the tidal wave of inquiries and counseling requests that the Fork Directive has caused.”
“OPM’s arbitrary and rushed deadline harms the public by threatening untargeted mass resignations, loss of expertise, and disruption of government functioning inherent in an exploding and shape-shifting offer sent to millions of federal employees,” they wrote. “While Defendants are no doubt entitled to implement the Administration’s priorities within the bounds of the law, they have no entitlement to do so in an arbitrary fashion at unprecedented speed – less than two weeks – and have identified no concrete harm attendant to a short delay.”
But the Trump administration, in its own court filings, has insisted the offer is lawful and has argued that an extension of the deadline “will markedly disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty into a program that scores of federal employees have already availed themselves of, and hinder the Administration’s efforts to reform the federal workforce.”
Attorneys for the Justice Department, which is representing OPM, have also said the harms the unions alleged they faced from the tight deadline would only be exacerbated by an extension.
“Even Plaintiffs do not claim that this Court can or should halt the program entirely – they seek its extension, a form of redress that is entirely inconsistent with their fundamental complaint,” they told the judge in court papers. “Indeed, if anything, staying the acceptance date for the voluntary resignation program would exacerbate Plaintiffs’ claimed harm, as, under their theory, their expenditure of resources in response to inquiries will only increase.”
‘Follow the law’
The Trump administration should “follow the law” when it comes to reducing the federal workforce, American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley told reporters Monday before the judge’s ruling.
“If this administration wants to say there are too many people working for the federal government, they should follow the directives, they should follow the policies, they should follow the law,” Kelley said. “They also should do that in accordance with their obligation to bargain with unions.”
Speaking to several hundred members gathered in Washington, DC, for the union’s legislative and grassroots mobilization conference, Kelley said OPM’s emails about the deferred resignation offer contained “sloppy promises” and “ridiculous instructions.”
“It was clearly set to be intimidating and to sow fear,” he said.
The union believes it will ultimately win the case.
“Federal workers deserve to have all the clarity they need on this program to make the decision that is best for them,” Kelley said in a statement after the ruling. “The way this program was rolled out was unlawful, and it needs to be done right.”
Democracy Forward, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the unions, also said it was pleased the court is continuing the pause.
“Public service on behalf of the American people is not something to be bought and sold,” Democracy Forward CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement. “People and communities across the nation depend on a non-partisan, committed civil service.”
A deep downsizing of the federal workforce would harm Americans, several union members told CNN on Monday.
The Social Security Administration is already in a staffing crisis, said Joel Smith, president of AFGE’s Local 3184, which represents workers in nearly 100 agency offices across the South and Southwest. The deferred resignation program could make matters worse.
“Service to the public would be delayed even further,” he told CNN. “There would be a lengthier backlog in disability claims and retirement claims. It would take even longer to answer the phone.”
Smith knows of roughly 100 agency workers who accepted the deferred resignation offer only to be told they were ineligible because they were needed to continue serving the public. The employees mainly assist people in field offices, answer the phones and conduct other daily operations.
The Department of Veterans Affairs late last week informed staffers that scores of positions — including many in the Veterans Health Administration who work with patients — were not eligible for the deferred resignation program.
“There were sincere concerns from people who run hospitals that if even six (operating room) nurses take the deferred resignation offer, they couldn’t do surgeries,” MJ Burke, first executive vice president of AFGE’s National VA Council, told CNN.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
