Judge Rejects Union Effort To Stop Trump’s Buyout Of Government Workers

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected an effort to block the Trump administration from buying out the contracts of tens of thousands of federal workers, saying that the public sector unions that sued lacked standing. 

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. declined to block the Office of Personnel Management’s “Fork in the Road” program, which gave two million federal workers the opportunity to quit and be paid through September. Due to his ruling, the window to accept the offer closed Wednesday at 7:20 p.m. ET after at least 75,000 workers took the deal. 

The American Federation of Government Employees and several other unions challenged the program, arguing that the offer violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). 

“The plaintiffs are unable to succeed on the merits of their two APA claims because they lack Article III standing and because this Court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over the claims asserted,” O’Toole said. 

The judge added that the unions did not have direct enough interest to challenge the program. 

“The plaintiffs here are not directly impacted by the directive. Instead, they allege that the directive subjects them to upstream effects including a diversion of resources to answer members’ questions about the directive, a potential loss of membership, and possible reputational harm,” he wrote. “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. This is not sufficient.”

McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management, celebrated the ruling, saying that OPM was “pleased the court has rejected a desperate effort to strike down the Deferred Resignation Program.”

“There is no longer any doubt: the Deferred Resignation Program was both legal and a valuable option for federal employees,” she told the New York Post. “This program was carefully designed, thoroughly vetted, and provides generous benefits so federal workers can plan for their futures.”

AFGE President Everett Kelley said the decision was “a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants.”

“We continue to maintain it is illegal to force American citizens who have dedicated their careers to public service to make a decision, in a few short days, without adequate information, about whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk,” Kelly added. 

The “fork” program was introduced on January 28, saying that significant cuts to the size of government were on the horizon and that OPM could not guarantee that everyone’s position would still be in place with incoming reforms. The offer paralleled a similar offer that Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) project, offered to employees of Twitter, now X, when he took over the social media platform. 

Musk said government employees who took the offer from OPM would be able to do “whatever” they wanted for six months with full government pay and benefits.