Updated: 6:21 p.m. ET.
A federal judge on Monday extended his order blocking the Trump administration from implementing Trump and Elon Musk’s controversial “deferred resignations” program, just hours before the new deadline for federal workers to accept the offer by Monday night.
U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr., a Clinton appointee in Massachusetts’ federal district court, previously paused the administration’s February 6 deadline for federal employees to decide whether to stay in their jobs or accept eight months’ worth of pay and benefits in exchange for not working and resigning by Sept. 30. The American Federation of Government Employees, who filed the lawsuit against the program, have argued that the plan violates the Administrative Procedure Act due to its shifting legal justifications and chaotic rollout.
The Justice Department, for its part, has argued that the unions lack standing in this case, and unions and employees seeking to challenge the program must go first to the Federal Labor Relations Authority or the Merit Systems Protection Board. According to the Boston news station WHDH, attorneys for the administration said that 65,000 employees have accepted the deferred resignation offer. [Editor’s note: The offer was extended to some intelligence workers but not broadly to the Defense Department workforce in general.]
Unions and congressional Democrats have warned employees not to accept deferred resignation because of draft agreements promulgated by the Office of Personnel Management that require employees to waive their right to litigate their departure, as well unions’ right to represent them. And language suggests that an agency head could rescind employees’ resignation agreements, an action that would not be appealable to the MSPB.
O’Toole reportedly did not offer a timeline for when he would issue a decision in this case.
In a statement Monday, Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME, one of the plaintiffs alongside AFGE, praised the judge’s decision to keep the program on hold for now.
“We must continue to stop the purge of federal workers,” he said. “They are heroes for everything they do for our communities, not numbers on a political scoreboard. Together with AFGE and NAGE-SEIU, we will continue to move this case forward until federal workers receive the respect they deserve.”
