A federal judge in Boston on Thursday temporarily halted the Trump administration’s mass buyout plan for federal workers.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole, a Clinton appointee, temporarily paused the midnight Thursday deadline for federal employees to take a buyout offer of eight months pay and benefits in exchange for quitting now.
The judge ordered the administration to extend the deadline until after a 2 p.m. hearing Monday on the case.
Federal employees were sent a Jan. 28 “Fork in the Road” email that offered eight months of pay and benefits for those who accept by a February 6 deadline. The email went to at least 2 million federal workers So far, roughly 40,000 have accepted buyouts.
A group of labor unions for federal employees sued the Office of Personnel Management in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts over what it calls an “arbitrary and capricious” directive offering early retirement plans aimed at dramatically shrinking the size of the federal workforce.
Members of the military and other national security and first responder workers were excluded from the offer.
Mr. Trump also ordered all federal employees to return to work in the office. The vast majority work at home at least part time, which has left many federal office buildings vacant.
Lawyers for the unions argued in the lawsuit that the “Fork Directive” does not take into account “adverse consequences” on the functioning of the federal government and offers conflicting information about how the directive would be carried out if an employee accepts the offer. The suit also claims the mass buyout conflicts with “reasoned practices” of government restructuring and ignores past methods of reducing the government workforce.
The lawsuit claims the buyouts are aimed at replacing outgoing employees with people politically aligned with President Trump, and it argues there’s no guarantee that the buyout offer will provide eight months of pay because a temporary bill to fund the government expires in March.
“If these employees leave or are forced out en masse, the country will suffer a dangerous one-two punch. First, the government will lose expertise in the complex fields and programs that Congress has, by statute, directed the Executive to faithfully implement. The government will have fewer qualified employees to execute the statutorily-required tasks that still remain,” the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the unions by the left-leaning legal advocacy group, Democracy Forward, said.
Lawyers asked the judge to halt the “Fork Directive” and its Feb. 6 deadline for at least 60 days by declaring it illegal. They also asked the judge to require the Trump administration to provide legal justification and a new directive for employees.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the National Association of Government Employees, the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.