Judge lifts pause on Trump buyout offer, says unions don't have standing in lawsuit

On Wednesday, a federal judge lifted a stop order placed on the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program that would offer federal workers payments for several months if they quit their jobs now, saying that the federal unions that sued the Trump administration do not have legal standing in the matter. Around 75,000 employees have taken the offer. 

According to the Washington Post, US District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr lifted the pause after placing it last Thursday, where federal employee unions called the offer an “arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum" in a lawsuit. 

The judge ruled that the unions lacked standing to sue and that his court lacked jurisdiction in the case. The judge added that the unions were not directly impacted, as the action was not impacting the unions, but their lawsuit was “challenging a policy that affects others, specifically executive branch employees.”

75,000 workers have accepted the deal to resign immediately and go eight months with severance payments. McLaurine Pinover of the Office of Personnel Management said, “The Deferred Resignation Program was both legal and a valuable option for federal employees.” She said that the program closed at 7pm on Wednesday evening, after the decision. This move comes amid ongoing efforts to reduce the federal workforce, with layoffs at various executive agencies like the EPA and DOJ.

Federal employee union AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that it was a “setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants.”

Lawyers working for the union wrote, taking aim at DOGE head Elon Musk, “Importantly, this decision did not address the underlying lawfulness of the program. 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.”

Musk has been working with the Trump administration to make heavy cuts to federal spending and Democrats have been up in arms over his efforts with DOGE.