Court lifts block on Trump order to strip federal workers of union rights
The injunction had frozen the president’s order seeking to remove collective bargaining rights from workers at dozens of government agencies and offices.
May 17, 2025 By Frances Vinall WP
A federal appeals court on Friday lifted a block on an executive order from President Donald Trump that seeks to strip union rights from federal workers at dozens of agencies and offices.
Trump in March issued an executive order that said that parts of the United States Code that protect federal workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain would no longer apply to agencies including most or all of the Departments of Treasury, Defense, Veterans Affairs, State and Justice. The executive order covers about two-thirds of the federal workforce, according to the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which filed a lawsuit challenging it.
It had been blocked by a federal judge last month as part of the NTEU lawsuit, but that block was lifted Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In its order canceling the injunction, the appeals court’s 2-1 majority said the union had not proved it would suffer “irreparable harm” if the executive order was executed while the lawsuit challenging it was ongoing.
Judge J. Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee, dissented. Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and Justin R. Walker, appointed by George H.W. Bush and Trump, respectively, sided with the government.
The Trump administration had agreed not to terminate federal collective bargaining agreements until the litigation had concluded, the appeals court’s order said.
Trump’s order said the labor laws “cannot be applied to these agencies and agency subdivisions in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations.” The legislation affirming federal employees’ union rights allows for the president to exclude agencies and offices to ensure national security when they have “as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
Trump’s order includes agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, the Federal Communications Commission and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The NTEU is arguing in its lawsuit that the agencies and offices covered do not primarily do work related to national security.
The union, which represents employees at 37 federal agencies and offices, did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment. National President Doreen Greenwald said in a news release last month, “We all know this has nothing to do with national security and that the true goal here is to make it easier to fire federal employees across government.”
The Trump administration has moved to significantly downsize the federal government including through the U.S. DOGE Service overseen by billionaire Elon Musk. The president has issued a number of executive orders to reduce the federal bureaucracy that have faced legal challenges, with unions participating in multiple lawsuits.
The appeals court’s majority said that the injunction blocking the executive order “inflicts irreparable harm on the President by impeding his national-security prerogatives, which were explicitly recognized by Congress.”
It added that it was problematic for the judiciary to overly assert itself in a national security context, in which “the President generally enjoys ‘unique responsibility.’”
Jintak Han contributed to this report.
