A federal judge in Massachusetts has paused the Thursday deadline for the White House’s “fork in the road” offer to federal workers, temporarily pushing it to at least Monday afternoon when a hearing is scheduled.
The offer, which came in an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), said that federal employees who resigned by the end of the day on Feb. 6 would be paid through September 2025. A later communication added that there would not be an obligation to perform their duties through that point.
The deadline will be suspended until the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 10. The ruling was handed down by U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr., according to reporting by The New York Times and court documents reviewed by HousingWire.
O’Toole “enjoined the [OPM] from carrying out the buyout offers that have been emailed to federal workers until a hearing scheduled for Monday afternoon,” the Times reported. “The administration has said tens of thousands of workers have already accepted offers to stop working and resign effective in September, but still collect pay until then.”
Earlier this week, unions representing more than 800,000 federal workers filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, arguing that “the Fork in the Road Directive is arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with law.” The filing goes to argue that workers would “suffer irreparable harm absent relief, and that the balance of equities and the public interest weigh in favor of a Temporary Restraining Order.”
The so-called “buyout offer” was seen by some federal workers and other experts as a power grab by the new Trump administration. It could have major implications for a White House that has aggressively moved to limit the federal government’s footprint, testing the limits of presidential power as well as the legal authority of the office to make such an offer.
According to The Wall Street Journal, as many as 40,000 federal workers have already accepted the offer. But the reporting characterized the figure as putting the “Trump administration at risk of falling short of its target for slashing the government through voluntary measures.”
