Unions lack standing to challenge ‘deferred resignation,’ judge rules, voiding deadline pause

Unions challenging the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer to government workers lack the standing to do so, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Wednesday. 

The decision eliminated the temporary pause on the deadline for workers to accept the offer and denied the unions’ attempt to seek a longer-term hold on the deadline through a preliminary injunction. 

As a result, the deadline to accept the offer closed Wednesday at 7 p.m., according to a statement from Office of Personnel Management spokeswoman McLaurine Pinover. She said the final number of people who accepted the offer is about 75,000.

Under OPM’s offer, which the agency dubbed “Fork in the Road,” federal employees could indicate they wanted to leave the government and have their resignation become effective Sept. 30. In the meantime, they would still receive pay and benefits and be exempted from in-person work requirements. The original deadline to accept was Feb. 6. 

“OPM is pleased the court has rejected a desperate effort to strike down the Deferred Resignation Program,” Pinover said. She added: “There is no longer any doubt: the Deferred Resignation Program was both legal and a valuable option for federal employees.”

However, Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions that brought the lawsuit, called the ruling a “setback” but not the end of their fight. AFGE’s lawyers are assessing the union’s next steps, he said.

“Importantly, this decision did not address the underlying lawfulness of the program,” Kelley said. “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.”

Judge George O’Toole of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts initially issued a temporary pause on the Feb. 6 deadline before it took effect as the litigation moved forward. On Feb. 10, he again extended the pause to the deadline — that time without a specific end date.  

In his ruling Wednesday, O’Toole said that standing requires the plaintiffs to be more than bystanders and the unions are not directly impacted by the 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 said. 

This story was updated Feb. 13, 2025, with the number of people who took the offer.