A federal judge in Boston, United States has stated that President Donald Trump’s federal buyout plan can proceed, rejecting a legal challenge brought by three federal employee unions and backed by 20 Democratic attorneys general.
U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. denied the request to block the buyout, determining that the unions lacked standing to sue and that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case.
He noted that the unions were not directly impacted by the buyout offer, only experiencing “collateral impacts” such as declining membership and an increased need to assist members.
“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,” the judge wrote.
O’Toole Jr. also ruled that the matter falls under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, which requires disputes to go through an administrative review process before reaching the courts.
“According to this complex scheme, disputes must first be administratively exhausted before the employing agency and the relevant administrative review board and any further challenges are properly heard in a court of appeals,” the order said.
The decision is a victory for the Trump administration, which has defended the buyout as a necessary step in the president’s plan to reshape the federal workforce.
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“This Boston Buyout Ruling is the first of many legal wins for the President,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The Court dissolved the injunction due to a lack of standing. This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities.”
The buyout offer, sent via email under the subject line “Fork in the Road,” is a key part of Trump’s plan to downsize the federal government through billionaire Elon Musk’s newly established Department of Government Efficiency. The offer promised full pay and benefits until September for any federal employee who accepted a deferred resignation by Feb. 6, with no requirement to work after signing the agreement.
During a hearing on Monday, Department of Justice attorney Eric Hamilton described the buyout as a “humane off-ramp” for federal employees ahead of Trump’s planned workforce changes.
“President Trump campaigned on a promise to reform the federal workforce,” Hamilton said, explaining the administration’s effort to reduce government size and enforce a return-to-office order.
He argued that delaying the buyout would cause irreparable harm, as the administration intended to move forward with its restructuring plans once the offer period closed.
The unions’ lawyer, Elena Goldstein, criticised the programme as an “unprecedented” move with a “slapdash exploding deadline,” arguing that it has created widespread confusion.
“For the last two weeks, confusion has rained for millions of career civil servants,” she said. “This is a program of unprecedented magnitude that raises questions about the rationality of OPM’s decision-making.”
She further contended that the administration had failed to follow legal protocols, including conducting cost-benefit analyses, evaluating the policy’s impact on government functions, and addressing potential conflicts of interest involving Musk.
“OPM appears to be making this up as they are going along,” she said. “When the government wants to decide, there are ways to do this correctly … none of that happened here in the two weeks since they enacted this program.”
Hamilton dismissed the unions’ argument as “legally incoherent,” asserting that the buyout did not alter the government’s financial obligations but simply changed what employees were “expected to do and not do during their period of employment.”
The unions have also argued that Trump exceeded his authority and that the programme violates federal law by using unappropriated funds. They cited the 1940s Administrative Procedure Act, which sets legal standards for agency decision-making.
“In the tech universe, ‘move fast and break things’ is a fine motto in part because they’re not playing with the public’s money, and it’s expected that most initiatives are going to fail,” Loyola Marymount law professor Justin Leavitt said. “Congress knows that, so in 1946 they basically said, ‘When agencies do stuff … they have to be careful about it. They’ve got to consider all aspects of the problem.’”
While the ruling allows the buyout to proceed, O’Toole Jr. did not clarify how the buyout deadline is affected. The Trump administration, in response to the lawsuit, has extended the deadline, with more than 65,000 federal employees already accepting the offer.
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