- A federal judge delayed Trump's deferred-resignation deadline.
- Federal workers originally had until Thursday to decide whether they wanted to accept the offer.
- The court ruling said that the government couldn't take further action until at least Monday.
A judge on Thursday extended President Donald Trump's federal employee buyout deadline to at least Monday.
George O'Toole Jr, a Massachusetts district court judge, said the court wanted to give time for additional legal briefs to be filed.
"I enjoin the defendants from taking action to implement the so-called Fork directive, pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues," he said.
In effect, O'Toole pushed back the date for federal employees to accept the buyout to at least Monday afternoon, when a new hearing is set to be held.
Last month, the Trump administration gave workers until Thursday to accept its deferred-resignation offer, which the administration said would allow employees to stop working but continue to receive full pay and benefits through September 30.
A group of labor unions filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to extend the deadline.
A representative from Democracy Forward, which represented one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, confirmed the court's decision to Business Insider and said the Office of Personnel Management was required to notify federal employees there's no existing deadline for deferred resignations.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. OPM wrote in a post on X that it's extending the deferred resignation deadline to February 10: "The program is NOT being blocked or canceled. The government will honor the deferred resignation offer."
Over a dozen federal workers told BI that they still had unanswered questions about the logistics of the buyouts as the deadline approached, including what retirement benefits would look like. One worker said they hoped the deadline would be extended so they didn't "have to make a major life decision in nine days."
The White House previously confirmed to BI that over 20,000 federal workers had accepted the buyout offer as of Tuesday. It's unclear how many more workers accepted the offer before Thursday's court decision.
Federal employees were still receiving reminders of the deferred-resignation deadline on Thursday morning, according to an email reviewed by BI. The email said that the deadline would not be extended and that employees who wanted to accept the buyout offer should reply to the email from OPM with the word "resign."
"We are pleased the court temporarily paused this deadline while arguments are heard about the legality of the deferred resignation program," Everett Kelley, the president of AFGE — one of the groups that filed the legal challenge — said in a statement. "We continue to believe this program violates the law, and we will continue to aggressively defend our members' rights."
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