(CN) — A federal judge on Wednesday has dissolved his temporary restraining order of President Donald Trump’s federal worker buyout program, allowing more than 2 million federal employees the option to take the president’s offer in his bid to drastically shrink the size of the federal government.
In a five-page order, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr., a Bill Clinton appointee in Massachusetts, paved the way for Trump to proceed with his “Fork in the Road” buyout program. Last week, O’Toole put the program on ice at the behest of unions representing more than 800,000 federal employees.
The unions argued the “deferred resignation” offer, in which federal employees could immediately resign but retain pay and benefits until Sept. 30, is unlawful and unconstitutional.
But O’Toole concluded on Wednesday that the unions lack standing to claim harm in the case, as they are “mere bystanders” when compared with the employees actually being offered the buyouts.
“The plaintiffs here are not directly impacted by the directive,” O’Toole wrote. “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. 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,” he added.
It’s unclear whether the unions will appeal O’Toole’s ruling in U.S. Circuit Court. But Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward — a national legal group representing the plaintiffs — told Courthouse News on Wednesday that her firm will “continue to pursue all legal options to defend the civil service and protect the American people from extremism.”
“Since the beginning of Trump’s second term just weeks ago when on Day 1 he showed he would disregard the Constitution, Democracy Forward has been committed to protecting the American people from abuses of power and assaults on our democracy, including the administration’s attack on our career public service workers — the Americans who serve us all,” Perryman said.
On Jan. 28, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management sent out an email titled “Fork in the Road” to more than 2 million federal employees, who were all offered the buyouts from the Trump administration. The employees faced a tight deadline of Jan. 30 at midnight to take the offer, under threats of future downsizing in the federal government.
The following week, three labor unions — the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — filed their lawsuit against the Office of Personnel Management.
On the heels of the lawsuit, O’Toole had initially agreed to freeze the Jan. 30 deadline, effectively putting the whole buyout program on pause as the issue was litigated. At the time, roughly 40,000 employees, or 2% of those who were offered the deal, had reportedly accepted the offer — short of the White House’s goal of cutting between 5% and 10% of the federal workforce.
In their complaint, the unions argued that Trump’s buyouts leave the country susceptible to a “dangerous one-two punch” if all of the employees leave or “are forced out en masse.” They also likened the buyout to billionaire Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter, now X, when he slashed nearly 80% of the company’s workforce.
In fact, the “Fork in the Road” name is identical to the subject line Musk used when announcing to Twitter employees that the layoffs were imminent.
Musk, alongside Trump, is one of the driving forces behind the federal buyout program. It’s one of several directives he’s spearheading as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial arm of the executive branch with the supposed aim of reducing government waste and spending.
The Trump administration has been on the receiving end of several legal challenges over its aggressive axing of federal programs. For example, a group of states sued the administration last month for its “reckless and dangerous” Jan. 27 memo to freeze federal funding across the board. That directive remains paused after a federal judge called it “constitutionally flawed.”
Some lawsuits have targeted Musk’s behavior, too. A group of unions sued the Treasury Department for granting Musk and nongovernment agents at the Department of Government Efficiency unprecedented access to the sensitive financial information of millions of Americans.