A federal judge in Boston will decide Thursday whether to suspend the Trump administration’s mass buyout plan for federal workers.

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.

Nearly all federal employees were sent a Jan. 28 “Fork in the Road” email that offered eight months of pay and benefits for those who accept it by the Feb. 6 deadline. So far, roughly 40,000 have taken the buyout.

The Trump administration sent the offer to at least 2 million federal workers, according to Katie Miller, a member of the advisory board to Mr. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is headed by Elon Musk.

Mr. Trump also ordered all federal employees to return to the office for work. The vast majority work at home at least part-time, which has left many federal office buildings vacant.

The lawsuit argued 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.

It 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 aligned with the Trump administration, and it claims 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 are asking a judge to halt the “Fork Directive” and its Thursday deadline for at least 60 days by declaring it illegal. They also want 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.