By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -A federal judge on Wednesday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to carry out its federal worker buyout program as the Republican president moves to overhaul and downsize the U.S. government, handing a setback to unions seeking to stop the plan.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole in Boston dissolved an earlier order he issued that had paused the program at the urging of unions representing more than 800,000 federal employees.
The unions have called the administration’s “deferred resignation” offer to federal civilian employees unlawful. But O’Toole concluded that the unions lacked legal standing to challenge the program.
Lawyers for the unions did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They could potentially ask an appeals court to halt the program.
The American Federation of Government Employees and other unions had filed a lawsuit arguing that the plan announced in January was unlawful and that the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, lacked authority to implement the program.
Trump, who began his second term as president on January 20, has put Elon Musk in charge of what they call the Department of Government Efficiency and has deputized the billionaire to lead the overhaul. Democrats and other critics have accused Musk, who heads electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, of improperly taking over the federal government. Some federal workers have held protests against Musk’s actions.
In a January 28 email entitled “Fork in the Road” that was sent to nearly all federal employees, OPM announced what it described as a “deferred resignation program” in which employees could choose to resign now and retain all pay and benefits until Sept. 30.
The email said employees could remain on the payroll without having to work in person and possibly having their duties reduced or eliminated in the meantime. Interested employees needed to only reply with the word “resign” to take part.
The email’s title and contents mirrored a message that Musk, the world’s richest man, sent to Twitter employees after he acquired the social media platform, now called X, in 2022.
The buyout offer covered around 2 million civilian full-time federal workers except those in immigration and national security-related positions and people working for the U.S. Postal Service.
As the deadline approached, the Trump administration had repeated its warning that most federal agencies are likely to be downsized, a message seen by workers as pressure to accept the buyout offer.
The unions in their lawsuit argued that OPM’s buyout directive was “stunningly arbitrary” and violated the Antideficiency Act, a federal law that bars agencies from spending more money than Congress appropriated.
By encouraging employees to broadly quit without regard to their agency, job duties or institutional memory, OPM is ignoring the adverse consequences resignations could have on the government’s ability to function, the unions said.
At the request of the unions, O’Toole last week delayed an initial February 6 deadline for employees to resign to February 10. He then that day put the deadline on hold pending a further order of the court while he considered the case. O’Toole was appointed to the bench by Democratic former President Bill Clinton,
The unions asked that the deadline be put fully on hold to give them time to seek further relief through the courts and ensure that their members can make informed decisions.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi)
