A protester holds a fork during a rally against billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Feb. 7 in Washington, D.C.
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Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images North America
After issuing two stays, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole has declined to block the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program for federal employees.
The ruling comes more than two weeks after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an email to more than 2 million civilian employees of the federal government with the subject line “Fork in the Road.”
The email presented government workers with a choice: They could resign now, in exchange for pay or benefits through the end of September. Or they could remain in their positions, with the caveat that their jobs are not guaranteed.
Moreover, those who stayed would face “significant” reforms, including layoffs, a return to working in the office and an expectation that they be “loyal,” the email said.
The legal group Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit on Feb. 4 on behalf of labor unions representing more than 800,000 civil servants. It alleges that the Trump administration’s resignation offer is unlawful, as well as “arbitrary and capricious in numerous respects.”
In his ruling, O’Toole wrote that the plaintiffs — the labor unions— lack standing to challenge the directive, because they are not directly impacted by the “Fork” 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,” O’Toole wrote in his decision. “This is not sufficient.”
O’Toole also stated that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction and that the complaints raised should have been taken first to the federal government’s internal system for administrative and judicial review.
Today’s ruling dissolves O’Toole’s stay on the “Fork” deadline, though it’s not clear if a new deadline will be set.
More than 65,000 federal employees, roughly 3% of the federal workforce, had agreed to resign as of Tuesday morning, according to a spokesperson at OPM.
Earlier this week, President Trump said he was confident his administration would prevail.
“I got elected on making government better, more efficient and smaller, and that’s what we’re doing, and I think it was a very generous buyout actually,” he said, speaking in the Oval Office.
Have information you want to share about the ‘Fork in the Road’ offer or ongoing changes across the federal government? Reach out to the author. Andrea Hsu is available through encrypted communications on Signal at andreahsu.08.
