A federal judge has indicated he will maintain his pause on the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program that allows federal workers to continue working remotely with full pay and job benefits until September 30.
U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole Jr., who presides in Boston, said on Monday the program’s looming deadline will be indefinitely delayed until he rules on a preliminary injunction in the case. He declined to rule on the matter at this time.
The buyout offer for federal employees was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Monday. The plan is part of President Donald Trump’s goal to reduce the federal workforce and cut government costs, making the executive branch more efficient.
The move came after O’Toole suspended the resignation initiative’s original deadline last Thursday to let a court hearing decide the fate of the offer. That hearing arrived Monday afternoon ahead of the midnight deadline.
Three labor unions representing federal employees — the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees — sought to block what they called an “arbitrary and capricious” buyout offer with a lawsuit last week. They claimed it violated federal law and, if enacted, would destabilize key federal agencies with a high number of vacancies.
Democratic attorneys general from 20 states and Washington, D.C., filed a brief in support of the unions’ litigation, although the judge ordered the brief and others like it be deleted from the docket.
“While there may be no positive rule forbidding it, in my judgment a trial court generally should not receive nor consider volunteered submissions by non-parties except as may be specifically authorized by statute or other authority,” O’Toole wrote on Monday.
The Office of Personnel Management emailed more than 2 million federal employees late last month, offering them the opportunity to resign more than seven months in advance as part of the “Fork in the Road” directive. That notice came nine days before the initial deadline last week. Despite the administration’s return-to-office mandate, applicants can work from home.
Lawyers for the agency argued that the unions failed to establish irreparable harm or legal standing to halt the resignation program that the administration deems lawful.
Meanwhile, the White House cast the pause issued last week as a victory.
“We are grateful to the Judge for extending the deadline so more federal workers who refuse to show up to the office can take the Administration up on this very generous, once-in-a-lifetime offer,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday after the order.
More than 65,000 federal workers already opted to take the resignation offer, an OPM spokesperson said on Friday. Normally, some 146,500 workers quit or retire each year. Out of roughly 2.3 million federal workers, the Trump administration hoped 5 to 10 percent of the federal workforce would volunteer to resign.