Federal judge lets Trump's ‘buyout' plan for federal employees proceed

CNN

13-02-2025

A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to move forward for the moment with its deferred resignation offer for federal employees.
US District Judge George O'Toole said federal employee unions, which brought a lawsuit on behalf of their members, are not directly impacted by the offer, so they lack standing to bring this case. He had previously issued a temporary restraining order against the program.
The ruling is a major win for the Trump administration, which has struggled to successfully defend its policies in court in roughly four dozen lawsuits.
The deferred resignation offer is a key piece of the Trump administration's effort to downsize the federal government.
About 75,000 workers have accepted the package, according McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management. The program closed at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Semafor first reported the number of employees who opted in.
The offer will generally allow them to leave their jobs but be paid through the end of September – though the unions and many workers have said that the information the administration has released about the package has been conflicting and confusing.
The 75,000 figure represents close to 4% of the roughly 2 million federal employees who received the incentive. However, not all may ultimately be able to take it since the administration exempted some positions after sending the offer – but the number of people in that situation is very low, Pinover said.
The White House has said its target is for between 5% and 10% of employees to resign. On Tuesday, Trump took a step to prepare for widespread layoffs among those who remain.
Eligible employees initially had until the end of last Thursday night to apply, but the Trump administration extended the deadline to just before midnight on Monday after O'Toole's temporary pause.
In his five-page ruling, O'Toole, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said he was wiping away his earlier orders that had extended the deadline for federal workers to accept the administration's deferred resignation offer.
Those orders frustrated the administration's attempt to bring a quick close to the so-called buyout offer.
The program was challenged by the American Federation of Government Employees and several other unions that argued it was unlawful and harmed them because it would divert resources to address 'the tidal wave of inquiries and counseling requests that the Fork Directive has caused.'
But O'Toole said those alleged harms are 'not sufficient' to give the unions the legal right – known as standing – to bring the lawsuit in the first place.
'The unions do not have the required direct stake in the Fork Directive, but are challenging a policy that affects others, specifically executive branch employees,' the judge wrote.
Lawyers for AFGE, the largest federal employee union, are evaluating the decision and assessing the next steps, Everett Kelley, the group's national president, said in a statement.
'Today's ruling is a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants. But it's not the end of that fight,' he said. 'Importantly, this decision did not address the underlying lawfulness of the program.'
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the ruling by the Massachusetts judge, hours after she suggested that some judges hearing cases pending against the Trump administration were 'judicial activists.'
'This Boston Buyout Ruling is the first of many legal wins for the President,' Leavitt said in a statement to CNN. 'The Court dissolved the injunction due to a lack of standing. This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities.'
O'Toole's ruling that unions don't have standing could impact the various attempts to stop Trump administration policies, especially when federal workers' unions have challenged those policies in the Washington, DC, federal court.
Unions are making a lot of the emergency claims to stop the Department of Government Efficiency around privacy issues, employment and others, and O'Toole noted in his ruling the DC Circuit has already held unions can't go straight to federal district court on a lot of matters under the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
This story has been updated with additional developments.