A theme of Donald Trump’s second term has been the courts dealing his administration a series of early legal losses. But Wednesday, a Massachusetts judge sided with the government’s Elon Musk-inspired “Fork in the Road” mass federal employee resignation deadline after temporarily pausing it.
The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by labor unions representing federal employees seeking to halt a deadline by which the Trump administration said employees could resign but still be paid through September. Musk had sent a similar “Fork in the Road” email to Twitter employees in November 2022.
After briefly pausing the deadline with a temporary restraining order last week, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole let the Trump priority proceed Wednesday. The Clinton appointee wrote that the union plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue and that the court didn’t have jurisdiction to hear their claims. O’Toole wrote that the unions weren’t directly harmed. “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,” the judge wrote, explaining why he dissolved his temporary restraining order and declined to issue further injunctive relief for the plaintiffs.
Following the ruling, NBC News reported that about 75,000 federal employees have accepted the “deferred resignation” offer, according to a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management.
Wednesday’s ruling is a reminder that the administration’s initial legal losses are just that: initial. Even O’Toole’s ruling is a procedural one that didn’t claim to decide the underlying legality of the effort. So there’s more litigation to be had on this and other issues that could end up at the Supreme Court on several fronts. Along the way, as this latest ruling shows, there will likely be some wins and losses on both sides, but the final legal answer is the one to watch.
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