Washington DC – U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman filed a preliminary injunction on April 28, 2025 blocking Trump’s efforts to remove the bargaining rights of Federal workers.
The Trump executive order was directed to unionized employees at the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services. At a April 26th hearing, judge Friedman said that the President Trump is ‘willing to be kind to those that work with him, but those that have sued him … he’s not going to bargain with. How else can you read what he’s done?”
“We commend the court for recognizing the Trump administration’s executive order stripping collective bargaining rights for what it was: illegal, retaliatory union-busting,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. “This was the most significant attack on workers’ rights in history, and if Trump was allowed to do it to federal workers, he would be able to do it to every worker in America, in every workplace and every industry.”
The preliminary injunction filed on April 28th was in response to the suit from the National Treasury Employees Union, representing 160,000 federal government employees. The request from NTEU asked for emergency relief from Trump’s attempt to eliminate collective bargaining for federal employees.
“The preliminary injunction granted at NTEU’s request means that the collective bargaining rights of federal employees will remain intact and the administration’s illegal agenda to sideline the voices of federal employees and dismantle unions is blocked. NTEU will continue to use every tool available to protect federal employees and the valuable services they provide from these hostile attacks on their jobs, their agencies and their legally protected rights to organize,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald in a statement.
