As 'Fork' resignation deadline arrives, a federal judge will consider a stay
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With just hours remaining for federal workers to decide whether to take the Trump administration's offer to resign from their jobs now while keeping their pay and benefits through Sept. 30, a federal judge in Massachusetts will weigh a request from labor unions to issue a temporary restraining order and stay today's deadline.
U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr., a Clinton appointee, will preside over a virtual hearing scheduled for noon CT.
The lawsuit, filed by the legal group Democracy Forward on behalf of unions representing more than 800,000 civil servants, alleges that the Trump administration's resignation offer is arbitrary and capricious as well as unlawful.
The unions argue that the offer fails to consider possible adverse consequences to the government's ability to function; sets an arbitrarily short deadline; and is pretext for removing and replacing workers on an ideological basis, among other things.
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The union is also challenging whether the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which announced the offer through a Jan. 28 email titled "Fork in the Road," exceeded its authority in promising pay and benefits through the end of September, pointing out that funding for most federal agencies expires on March 14, 2025.
The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from obligating any spending that has yet to be approved by Congress.
The resignation offer has gone out to more than 2 million civilian employees of the federal government, including employees of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. Earlier, OPM had excluded people in positions related to national security from the offer.
By late Wednesday, more than 40,000 employees, or roughly 2% of the federal workers eligible for the offer, had agreed to resign, according to an administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. The administration expects the number to surge in the final hours before the deadline.
Meanwhile, confusion over whether the deal is legal and enforceable persists, and many federal employees remain wary.
"I don't know anybody considering taking it who wasn't already planning on retiring," said David Casserly, a Labor Department employee of three and a half years, at a rally outside the Frances Perkins Building where the Labor Department is headquartered, on Wednesday.
The original "Fork" email warned employees who choose to stay that their jobs are not guaranteed. This week, leaders at some agencies warned of significant layoffs ahead.
Still, Casserly, who's also a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions suing the administration, said people are not intimidated.
"We have rights as federal employees, and we intend to exercise them to the fullest ability that we can," he said.
Copyright 2025, NPR
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