Federal Judge Allows Trump's Layoff Plan to Proceed

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A federal judge has lifted the “pause” he had imposed on the Trump administration, enforcing its February 6 deadline for participating in the “Fork in the Road” buyout plan; see . The five-page order by Federal District Judge and Clinton appointee George A. O’Toole, Jr., of the demolished the claims by the four public employees unions trying to stop the program.

The lawsuit was mostly stupid, but it had some humorous parts.

1) The ACLU believes there are four branches of the government.
2) It’s favorite “branch” is the imaginary one that has zero democratic accountability. https://t.co/bdcahKIVKz

— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) February 12, 2025

Judge O’Boyle ruled that [shocked face] none of the plaintiffs had standing to file suit to stop the buyout because they’d suffered no harm. Indeed, virtually every one of the court actions filed to stymie the Trump administration could be settled in five minutes if judges simply took the idea of “standing” seriously. The unions had claimed harm because they were being forced to spend time and money trying to stop the buyout, which could be devoted to other, unnamed, and probably criminal, union activities. Judge O’Boyle said the plaintiffs can’t “spend their way into standing, neither can the plaintiffs in this case establish standing by choosing to divert resources towards “respond[ing] to tremendous uncertainty created by OPM’s actions” and away from other union priorities.”

The bigger picture was the nature of the complaint itself.

Second, this Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to consider the plaintiffs’ pleaded claims. While not binding on this Court, the decision in Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Emps., AFL-CIO v. Trump (“AFGE”) is instructive. 929 F.3d 748 (D.C. Cir. 2019). In that case, the court held that the plaintiff-unions’ claims fell within the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute’s (“FSL-MRS”) scheme and therefore the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. Id. at 754.

This means the unions must exhaust appeals through the agency and then through the Federal Labor Relations Authority before heading to federal court.

At least 60,000 federal employees have signed up for the buyout, and I’m sure the events of the last couple of weeks will add more to the list.