A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday dissolved his temporary freeze on the Trump administration’s unprecedented offer for millions of federal workers to resign, allowing the controversial “fork in the road” program to proceed.
U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. had temporarily halted the administration’s offer of mass buyouts to millions of federal workers last week, just hours before the Thursday deadline for employees to accept the offer. That order came after labor unions representing government workers filed suit alleging that the administration did not have the legal authority to offer such buyouts.
In his ruling Wednesday, O’Toole found that the unions lacked legal standing to bring the suit.
“The plaintiffs here 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,” he wrote.
“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,” O’Toole added.
He said the “temporary restraining order previously entered is DISSOLVED and further preliminary injunctive relief is DENIED.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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