A federal appeals court unfroze a lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump‘s March order aiming to end collective bargaining for hundreds of thousands of government workers.
Trump issued an executive order earlier this year calling for the end of collective bargaining across various executive agencies. The president cited the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and national security concerns for the order, but was quickly met with lawsuits to block the move.
A federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the executive order, but on Friday a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 in favor of staying the lower court’s ruling. The Friday decision allows the order to be unfrozen, but it noted that the government said it would not terminate any collective-bargaining agreements until after lawsuits surrounding the legality of the order have been resolved.
“The Union asserts that without a preliminary injunction it will lose bargaining power and suffer reputational harm that will deter present and future membership,” the majority opinion said.
“But those harms are speculative because they would materialize only after an agency terminates a collective-bargaining agreement, and the Government directed agencies to refrain from terminating collective-bargaining agreements or decertifying bargaining units until after the litigation concludes,” the Friday ruling continued.
The court’s opinion did not address the merits of the argument, but only found that the lower district court erred by giving an injunction when there was no evidence of irreparable harm to the union.
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“Because the district court’s preliminary injunction is likely to be vacated for lack of irreparable harm, we need not address the Government’s arguments regarding the Union’s likelihood of success on the merits,” the opinion said.
The order on collective bargaining is the latest to go through legal challenges, as the president faces intense legal scrutiny for most of his executive actions. The March order was one of several aimed at reshaping the federal workforce, an undertaking his administration has prioritized in the beginning of his second term.