Trump’s remote work ban for federal employees, signed as an executive order on January 20, 2025, directs every federal agency to end remote work arrangements and bring employees back to their assigned duty stations on a full-time basis.1The White House. Return to In-Person Work Agency heads may grant exemptions they consider necessary, but the default is five days a week on-site. If you are a federal employee, your practical options now come down to complying, seeking a disability accommodation, relying on a union contract, taking a deferred resignation, or leaving. Each has consequences worth knowing before you decide.
What the Order Requires
The order tells agency heads to “take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.”1The White House. Return to In-Person Work There is no single government-wide deadline. Each agency sets its own timeline. OPM, for example, required employees within 50 miles of an OPM facility to report on-site full-time starting March 3, 2025.
One qualifier matters: the order “shall be implemented consistent with applicable law.” The Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 still requires every executive agency to establish a telework policy, determine which employees are eligible, and put a written telework agreement in place before telework begins.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 6502 – Executive Agencies Telework Requirement That statute has not been repealed, which is why the individual exceptions below still have legal footing.
How Your Attendance Is Tracked
Agencies are not using the honor system. Under the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies Act, agencies must track building occupancy and report the data to the Office of Management and Budget every two weeks.3The White House. M-25-25 Implementation of the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies Act The primary tool is PIV card data: the badge you swipe when you enter a federal building. OMB guidance instructs agencies to count only the first swipe of the day per employee. Agencies that cannot use PIV data are authorized to use sensors or other technology. The first data submission was due May 19, 2025, covering the pay period from May 4 through May 17, and biweekly reporting has continued since.
For you as an individual, the practical point is this: if your badge data does not show you present at the required frequency, that gap becomes documented. Agencies use this data to identify employees who may face discipline for failing to meet attendance expectations, not just for real estate planning.
Disability Accommodations Still Apply
The return-to-office mandate does not override federal disability law. Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees with disabilities, and telework can qualify. In February 2026, the EEOC and OPM issued joint guidance confirming that remote or telework remains a potential reasonable accommodation in three situations: enabling participation in the hiring process, enabling performance of essential job functions, or enabling equal access to workplace benefits.4U.S. Office of Personnel Management. FAQs on Telework Accommodations for Disabilities in the Federal Government
Do not assume a prior telework accommodation continues automatically. The January 2025 executive order itself is treated as a valid “material change” in operational needs that lets agencies revisit previously approved arrangements. Your agency can request updated medical documentation and can ask your healthcare provider about treatments or self-accommodations that might allow on-site work. It cannot deny an accommodation solely because you declined a particular medical treatment, and it cannot use a blanket policy. Every request must go through an individualized interactive process. If you have a qualifying disability, contact your agency’s human resources office and be prepared to submit fresh documentation.
What Union Contracts Can Do for You
Federal employees covered by collective bargaining agreements have had more success resisting the mandate than employees without union representation. Multiple arbitrators have ruled that agencies violated their contracts by unilaterally canceling telework. In March 2025, an arbitrator found that the Social Security Administration violated its 2019 contract with the American Federation of Government Employees when it suspended all telework for roughly 38,000 bargaining unit employees, and ordered telework reinstated. A separate February 2025 arbitration ruling found that a blanket cancellation at the Department of Housing and Urban Development violated the union contract and constituted an unfair labor practice.
At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an arbitrator found that while the agency was not required to negotiate over the return-to-office mandate itself, it was required to bargain over the effects on employees’ work-life balance. The distinction matters. The president can order people back, but an agency operating under a collective bargaining agreement still has to negotiate how the mandate is implemented.
These rulings do not permanently block the return-to-office push, and they can be relitigated when contracts expire. If you are a union member, ask your local representative whether your agency’s telework provisions have been challenged and where any grievance stands.
If Your Position Is Reclassified as Schedule Policy/Career
On the same day the return-to-office order was signed, a separate executive order reinstated what was originally called “Schedule F,” now renamed “Schedule Policy/Career.”5The White House. Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce This reclassifies certain career employees from the competitive service into a new excepted service category. It targets positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”6Office of Personnel Management. OPM Answers to Frequently Asked Schedule Policy-Career Questions No specific job titles or GS grades are automatically targeted. Each agency reviews its own workforce and petitions OPM to move positions it identifies as policy-influencing.
For return-to-office compliance, the consequence is significant. Employees reclassified into Schedule Policy/Career lose the right to appeal adverse actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board.7Federal Register. Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service The MSPB itself has confirmed it will not hear appeals related to these conversions. Under the OPM final rule published in February 2026, these employees are exempt from the adverse-action and performance-based removal procedures that normally protect career civil servants.
In practice, if your position is reclassified and you refuse to come back, the agency can dismiss you without the multi-step grievance process available to competitive service employees. You are not required to personally support the president’s policy positions, but you are required to “faithfully implement administration policies,” and failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.7Federal Register. Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service Agencies have broad latitude to treat a refusal to work on-site as insubordination.
The Financial Hit of Returning
If you moved to a lower-cost area during the remote work era, coming back to a duty station in a high-cost city carries real costs beyond the commute. Federal pay includes a locality adjustment that varies by geographic area. In the D.C. locality, that adjustment is nearly 34 percent on top of base pay. An employee who relocated away and is now reassigned to a duty station in a different locality pay zone can face a significant salary reduction as a result of the pay zone change.
Relocation reimbursement is not the escape hatch it once was. If your agency covers moving costs, every dollar of that reimbursement is treated as fully taxable wages under current law. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the tax-free treatment of civilian moving expenses, and that change was made permanent in 2025. Relocation payments show up in boxes 1, 3, and 5 of your W-2 and are subject to federal withholding at a flat 22 percent supplemental rate plus FICA. The only people who still receive tax-free moving benefits are active-duty military on permanent change of station orders. A handful of states still offer their own deductions.
Then there are the costs no one reimburses: breaking a lease, selling a home in a soft market, childcare for the drop-offs and pickups a home schedule used to cover, and the daily cost of commuting into a major metro area.
The Deferred Resignation Option
Alongside the mandate, agencies offered a “deferred resignation” deal to employees willing to leave voluntarily. The Department of Defense version gave employees a one-week window in April 2025 to accept. Those who took the offer were placed on paid administrative leave starting May 1, 2025, and had to formally resign or retire by September 30, 2025.8Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service. DoD Deferred Resignation Program FAQ During the leave period, pay, benefits, leave accruals, and Thrift Savings Plan matching contributions continued. Employees approved for the program were explicitly exempt from the return-to-office requirement while on leave.
Two catches. Participants are not eligible for unemployment benefits, because they technically remain federal employees while on administrative leave. And participants must sign a written separation agreement committing to a departure date.
Agencies also have authority to offer Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments when downsizing or restructuring. These buyouts max out at $25,000 per employee.9U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments Whether a buyout, a deferred resignation offer, or simply a return-to-office order lands on your desk depends on your agency and the restructuring plan it has approved through OPM.
Why the Push Is Structured This Way
Understanding the strategy helps explain why exemptions are narrow and enforcement is data-driven. The Department of Government Efficiency treats the return-to-office mandate as a workforce reduction tool. If everyone is ordered back five days a week, some percentage of employees who restructured their lives around remote work will quit rather than comply. That produces headcount reduction without a formal layoff.
A traditional reduction in force is slow and expensive. Federal regulations require at least 60 days’ written notice before releasing an employee, shortened to 30 days only when circumstances were not reasonably foreseeable.10eCFR. 5 CFR 351.801 – Notice Period Agencies must also rank employees by tenure, veterans’ preference, length of service, and performance ratings before deciding who goes.11U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Reductions in Force (RIF) Involuntarily separated employees may qualify for severance pay.12U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fact Sheet – Severance Pay Attrition through return-to-office pressure sidesteps all of it. The federal civilian workforce exceeds two million employees,13U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Workforce Size and Composition so even small percentage departures represent a large payroll reduction. Courts have pushed back on some broader workforce reduction efforts, but the attrition lever built into the return-to-office order remains largely intact because it is framed as a workplace policy rather than a workforce cut.
If you are weighing whether to comply, seek an accommodation, invoke your union contract, or take a deferred resignation, the choice depends on your position’s classification, your agency’s specific implementation timeline, your health, and your finances. Start by confirming your duty station, your agency’s current reporting requirements, and whether your position has been proposed for reclassification. Those three facts determine which of the paths above is realistically open to you.