A federal appeals court on Friday sided with the Trump administration, lifting a temporary block on a March executive order that prevented government workers from union bargaining.
The three judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the plaintiffs argument alleging Trump issued the order on the basis of retaliation.
Instead, the panel comprised of one appointee of former President Obama and two Trump appointees said the president “would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct.”
A lower court ruling issued by U.S. District Judge James Donato previously prevented 21 agencies from implementing the leader’s March executive order, siding with plaintiffs comprised of six labor unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the nation’s largest federal employee union.
A separate judge in Waco, Texas denied the Trump administration’s “power to rescind or repudiate” collective bargaining agreements across numerous agencies in late July.
However, on Friday, the appeals court upheld the president’s order citing the agencies excluded from union bargaining have “primary functions implicating national security” and cannot be subject to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, a law that established bargaining rights for most federal workers in 1978.
“President Trump’s latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants—nearly one-third of whom are veterans—simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies,” National President Everett Kelley said in a March statement in response to Trump’s order.
“This administration’s bullying tactics represent a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association. Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: fall in line or else,” she added.
The Friday order urged the federal government to refrain from ending collective bargaining agreements until “litigation has concluded.”
A 2024 report from the labor union found that one in every two new federal employees joined a union. It also found that almost a third of federal employees are union members in comparison to 6 percent in the private sector.
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