Lawfare Daily: The Legality of OPM's "Deferred Resignations”

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

On Jan. 28, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent out an email offering a “deferred resignation program” to over 2 million federal employees, encouraging them to resign effective Sept. 30. The offer is only open until Feb. 6—and in the intervening days since OPM announced the program, federal employees have received a blizzard of followup emails offering confusing and rapidly changing information.

Writing in Lawfare, Nick Bednar has examined the OPM offer and raised questions about whether federal employees who take this option will be able to seek legal recourse if their contract is not paid out. On the podcast, Bednar, an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota, joined Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic to walk through the many legal issues raised by the program and how federal employees are handling this period of uncertainty.

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