A federal judge has temporarily halted President Donald Trump’s plan to offer a resignation package to federal employees.
The White House had said that more than 40,000 US government workers had accepted the offer to resign in exchange for pay through 30 September – though workers expressed confusion about the terms of the deal.
Federal Judge George O’Toole Jr said the plan would be paused until a hearing on Monday when he could hear the merits of a lawsuit filed by federal employee unions who questioned the plan’s legality, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.
The order came hours before Thursday’s 23:59 ET (04:59 GMT) deadline for federal workers to accept the deal.
A lawyer for the Justice Department said the White House’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would notify federal employees that the deadline had been paused, CBS reported.
An OPM official told the news outlet that the agency would continue processing resignations until the Monday hearing.
The White House, which previously said it hoped for as many as 200,000 people to accept its offer, told US media they expected a spike in participation just ahead of the deadline.
“We expect the number to increase,” Leavitt told reporters outside the West Wing on Thursday. “It’s going to save the American people tens of millions of dollars.”
Leavitt added that the administration encourages other workers to “accept the very generous offer”.
“If they don’t want to show up to the office, if they want to rip the American people off, then they’re welcome to take this buyout, and we’ll find highly competent individuals who want to fill these roles,” she said.
An analysis of the federal workforce by the non-profit Partnership for Public Service found that the annual attrition rate among federal employees is about 6%, suggesting that some workers may have been intended to leave government.
The resignation scheme’s announcement – delivered in the form of a late-night email with the subject line “Fork in the Road” – is part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to slash the size of the federal government and cut spending.
The worker union American Federation of Government Employees filed the lawsuit against the White House’s Office of Personnel Management, arguing it had violated the law as it did not have the funds to back the deal and have given conflicting guidance about its terms.
AFGE had previously warned its members “NOT to resign or respond” to the White House’s resignation package.
The union had said in an email to members that the offer was part of an “effort to dismantle the civil service and replace the skilled, professional workforce with unqualified political appointees and for-profit contractors”.
The union noted that Congress has not passed a budget past 14 March, meaning it was unclear whether agencies could pay workers through September.
“There is not yet any evidence the administration can or will uphold its end of the bargain, that Congress will go along with this unilateral massive restructuring, or that appropriated funds can be used this way, among other issues that have been raised,” AFGE said in the message.
Some federal employees had said that they buyout proposal came as a shock. They said they worried about unanswered questions with the process and its legality, which has piled on uncertainty to an already hectic start to Trump’s second term.
“The tone of the initial email was like ‘you may be cut anyway,'” Monet Hepp, a medical support specialist at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, previously told BBC. “People were blindsided by it.”
Some employees thought the email was spam, as it was such a departure from typical government communcations, causing them to delete it intially.
“I want to confirm that this is a legitimate communication from OPM,” a public affairs officer with the VA wrote in an email that was sent to employees and shared with the BBC.
Democrats have questioned the legality of the resignation package and warned that it would lead to a “brain drain” that would be “felt by every American”.
“Without the expertise and institutional knowledge that so many federal employees bring to their work, our government will be incapable of responding effectively to national emergencies, serving the American public, or even carrying out routine operations,” Democrats on the House Oversight Commitee wrote in a letter to President Trump.
On Tuesday, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) became the first national security department to extend the offer to its staff, telling its entire workforce they could quit and receive about eight months of pay and benefits.
Former US intelligence officials and several lawmakers have raised concerns that this offer could undermine US national security priorities.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cautioned CIA employees against taking the offer.
“There are few government agencies more essential to our national security than the CIA,” Warner said in a statement. “A lot of federal employees, including at the CIA, are my constituents, and I’ve been warning them that these ‘buyouts’ are empty promises, since Congress hasn’t approved any money to do it.”
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