A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration from terminating a significant number of federal collective bargaining agreements. In a ruling in favor of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) on April 25, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman found the executive order to be unlawful, forestalling its implementation until the case is fully heard.
In late March, as part of his larger plan to reorganize the federal workforce, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to invalidate collective bargaining agreements across a wide range of agencies, thereby removing job protections from employees whose work was deemed related to national security. Included in the order’s purview are the departments of Defense, State, and Justice, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Communications Commission, among others. If implemented, the order would cancel the union protections for hundreds of thousands of workers — some 75% of the federal workforce.
The White House defended the order by asserting the need to protect national security. There is legal precedent for a president doing so, but never at this scale. Further hinting at Trump’s motives was a White House fact sheet claiming federal employee unions are obstacles to the president, specifically that some of them have “declared war” on his agenda.
In its suit, the NTEU said that “the president’s exclusions are not based on national security concerns but, instead, a policy objective of making federal employees easier to fire and political animus against federal sector unions.”
Friedman likewise took issue with the Trump administration’s broad definition of “national security.” He cited the Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health as examples of agencies that have no obvious national security connection. The judge also raised concerns about Trump’s reason for issuing the order. “He’s willing to be kind to those that work with him,” Friedman said, but “he’s not going to bargain with” those who have acted against him.
After the ruling, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly called the decision "absurd" in a statement and said the Trump administration would immediately appeal.
Rachel Zheliabovskii is a specialist, B2C content, at SHRM.
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