President Donald Trump’s plan to buyout federal employees has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge until at least Monday.
According to ABC News, the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), overseen by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, will be unable to implement their “Fork in the Road” federal employee buyout offer, after U.S. District Judge George O’Toole blocked it and set a hearing date for Monday to consider blocking it further.
“I enjoined the defendants from taking any action to implement the so-called ‘Fork Directive’ pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues,” O’Toole reportedly said. “I believe that’s as far as I want to go today.”
Department of Justice attorneys said they would be notifying every federal employee involved in the potential buyout, which is around 2 million. However, O’Toole described the hearing as a “table setting session” to schedule arguments for Monday’s hearing and made no further comment about the dispute over the buyout plan.
The federal employees were given a choice to accept the buyout plan and give a “deferred resignation” by Thursday — while unions representing 800,000 of those affected, which includes the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees called the offer unlawful and a “dangerous on-two punch” to the federal government.
In a court filing, DOJ lawyers argued a delay in the buyout would hinder Trump’s plan to reform the federal workforce.
“Upon his reelection to office, President Trump immediately set to work to transform the federal workforce,” the filing said. “Animating these and other critical reforms is the recognition that the federal workforce must be streamlined to be more efficient and to better serve the American people.”
“Extending the deadline for the acceptance of deferred resignation on its very last day will markedly disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty into a program that scores of federal employees have already availed themselves of, and hinder the Administration’s efforts to reform the federal workforce,” the lawsuit said.
The DOJ further argued the unions are not able to establish or demonstrate that the Trump administration is breaking the law, and noted if an injunction if filed, it should only apply to the employees represented by the unions and not the entire federal workforce.
The Office of Personnel Management would have to provide legal basis for the buyout offer, which would have paid those federal employees until September 30, 2025, if they gave their resignations by 11:59 p.m.
