President Trump Issues Executive Order Closing Executive Agencies on the Days Before and After Christmas: Are These Business Days under TRID?
President Trump issued an executive order yesterday, December 18, 2025, declaring that the federal government’s executive departments and agencies will be closed, and excusing federal employees from work, on the days before and after Christmas this year (December 24 and 26, 2025). The executive order states that these days “shall be considered as falling within the scope of Executive Order 11582 of February 11, 1971, and of 5 U.S.C. 5546 and 6103(b) and other similar statutes insofar as they relate to the pay and leave of employees of the United States.” How does this affect TRID timing requirements? Let’s discuss.
The main way these two new days off could impact TRID timing is if they count as federal holidays under Regulation Z’s “specific business day” definition. Specifically, Regulation Z has a definition of “business day” for certain timing requirements under the rule that includes all calendar days except Sundays and “the legal public holidays specified in 5 U.S.C. 6103(a)…” This type of “business day” is often referred to in compliance parlance as the “specific business day,” and TRID generally uses this definition for its “receipt” timing requirements. For example, the requirement that a consumer must receive the initial Closing Disclosure three business days before closing uses the specific business day definition. Regulation Z has a separate business day definition, which is often called the “general business day,” that applies to other Regulation Z requirements. A general business day is basically the days the creditor is open for substantially all of its business functions. As you can see from the definition, whether a day is legally a federal holiday has a direct impact on whether the day is a “specific business day.” Do these new closures before and after Christmas count as federal holidays under the specific business day definition?
The statutory provision that is mentioned in the definition, 5 U.S.C. 6103(a), sets forth a list of “legal public holidays” (what we often refer to as “federal holidays”). This list was last amended when the government added Juneteenth as a federal holiday (which I wrote about here, here, here, and here). But unlike the legislation that added Juneteenth to this provision, yesterday’s executive order does not, and could not, amend the statutory list of federal holidays under section 6103(a). In addition, the executive order only mentions these days in 2025 and does not apply to future years. Further, the references to Executive Order 11582 and 5 U.S.C. 5546 and 6103(b) (the subsection after 6103(a)) only deal with pay and leave issues for federal employees and the situation when federal holidays fall on Sundays, but not the creation of new holidays. For these reasons, yesterday’s executive order does not affect the specific business day definition under Regulation Z.
As a reminder, I led the original final TRID rule, and the design of the forms, when I was a Senior Counsel & Special Advisor at the CFPB. If you would like to discuss the issues in this blog post, or have any other TRID questions, please email me at rich@garrishorn.com.
