President Donald Trump’s plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce hit a snag on Thursday, when a federal judge prevented the administration from implementing the scheme until a lawsuit challenging the order receives a hearing next week. The judge’s order also extended the deadline for federal workers to accept the buyout, which had been set for 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday night.

“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,” wrote U.S. District Judge George O’Toole, Jr., a Clinton appointee on senior status in the federal District Court of Massachusetts. The Trump administration had offered the buyout in an email titled, “A Fork in the Road,” echoing a similar scheme that Elon Musk implemented when he took ownership of Twitter.

O’Toole’s order did not rule on the merits of the buyout program, and the judge scheduled a hearing for 2 p.m. Eastern on Monday.

Late last month, the White House rolled out a buyout option they hoped would incentivize federal employees to leave their jobs in an effort to downsize the federal government and eliminate work-from-home provisions, saving up to $100 billion annually. “This is a rare, generous opportunity — one that was thoroughly vetted and intentionally designed to support employees through restructuring,” said Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) spokeswoman McLaurine Pinover.

A Tuesday email to all federal employees explained, “If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason).” OPM clarified on Wednesday that those who accepted the buyout offer would go on administrative leave immediately; they would continue to receive paychecks through the end of the fiscal year but would no longer work. Federal employees had to decide to accept the offer by Thursday.

Members of the military and U.S. Postal Service were not eligible for the buyout offer, and positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, and other key positions were also excluded.

On Wednesday, OPM sent another email, endeavoring to increase the attractiveness of the buyout offer. “The majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force,” they warned. Going forward, employees “will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward,” and “employees who engage in unlawful behavior or other misconduct will be prioritized for appropriate investigation and discipline, including termination.”

When right-leaning presidential administrations have sought to reduce the size of the federal government, they typically encounter civil service protections, which make it harder to fire federal employees. The Trump administration buyout is a new approach, designed to coax federal employees to leave of their own accord, spending money now to save money down the road.

The Trump administration hoped that 5% to 10% of the federal workforce would take the buyout option. This translates into somewhere between 90,000 to 180,000 employees, based on a federal civilian workforce of 1,869,986 on Thursday, according to OPM.

On Thursday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “The last time I checked in with the Office of Personnel and Management, there were more than 40,000 individuals, federal workers, that had accepted the buyout program. We expect that number to increase. That alone … is going to save the American people tens of millions of dollars.”

Based on a wide sampling of human observation — toddlers cleaning up their toys, college students turning in papers, homeowners paying bills, and writers on deadlines — many people aim to meet whatever requirements they are under until right before the deadline. Another way of saying the same thing is that many people wait as long as possible to act. Therefore, it seems quite plausible that the number of federal workers who will take advantage of the Trump buyback offer will increase significantly before the deadline. However, that deadline has now been indefinitely postponed.

In fact, the number might also have grown larger were it not for “widespread uncertainty about whether the buyout will work as advertised,” reported The Wall Street Journal. Some federal workers “were skeptical that those who accepted the resignation deal would be paid through September,” since Congress has not allocated the money that far into the future. They also expressed uncertainty about whether they could take a second job in the meantime, whether they could access their federal retirement plan, or whether they could one day return to government work.

(By their very nature, jobs in the federal government attract people who value certainty, as the jobs provide good benefits and protections against firing. Additionally, the people who literally write the rules are generally good at dotting their “i”s and crossing their “t”s, rendering them less understanding of anything that leaves the slightest wiggle room.)

However, the greatest uncertainty about the Trump buyout concerns the lawsuit, which has now placed its implementation in jeopardy. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a public sector labor union, challenged the legality of Trump’s order, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.” “It’s a scam and not a buyout,” declared AFGE President Everett Kelly. “If it was me, I wouldn’t do it.” Naturally, he would say that because fewer federal workers would reduce his union’s clout. AFGE urged federal employees “not to be tricked into resigning” because “you might not get paid.”

(This rhetoric about not getting paid seems a bit hyperbolic. I can’t see a Republican-controlled Congress failing to honor the Trump administration’s promise to pay these workers. Federal workers have always gotten paid; they even receive back pay when they are furloughed during a government shutdown.)

In response to the lawsuit, OPM complained that “extending the deadline for the acceptance of deferred resignation on its very last day will markedly disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty into a program that scores of federal employees have already availed themselves of, and hinder the Administration’s efforts to reform the federal workforce.”

This argument did not persuade the judge to let the deadline take effect, and the offer will remain open until at least Monday. On the positive side, perhaps the deadline extension will allow more federal employees to take advantage of the offer.

The buyout proposal brings an innovative business practice to Washington, but it does leave some unanswered questions. In addition to the uncertainty discussed above, it’s also worth asking whether the Trump administration’s goal of 5% to 10% of the federal workforce is ambitious enough. Axios noted that “The federal workforce’s normal attrition rate is about 6% a year, meaning some of those who’ve taken the buyout may have been planning to leave government service anyway.”

“I know there [have] been a lot of questions out there about whether it’s real and whether it’s a trick,” said Rachel Oglesby, chief of staff at the Department of Education. “And it’s exactly what it looks like. It’s one of the many tools that he’s [President Trump] using to try to achieve the campaign promise to bring reform to the civil service and changes to D.C.”