Judge grills administration on 'broad discretion' to break up federal unions

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Government Executive

April 23, 2025 05:04 PM ET


A federal judge appeared poised to at least partially block the Trump administration’s effort to strip two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights, following oral arguments Wednesday in one union’s lawsuit against the White House.

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order citing a rarely used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to exempt wide swathes of the federal government from federal labor law under the auspices of national security. Prior to the edict, the CSRA’s so-called national security exemption had only been used for the intelligence community and some pockets of federal law enforcement.

Shortly thereafter, the National Treasury Employees Union filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and asked U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, a Clinton appointee, to enjoin the government from implementing the order, which would bar union representation for two-thirds of the federal workforce writ large and 75% of federal employees currently represented by organized labor.

NTEU, and other unions in separate legal challenges, have argued that the executive order unlawfully stretches a narrow exception beyond the legal bounds of the Civil Service Reform Act and that the administration is acting not out of concern for national security, but rather to retaliate against unions that have challenged other workforce policies in court, violating their First Amendment rights.

Read more: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/04/judge-grills-administration-broad-discretion-break-federal-unions/404783/