Government Executive – GovExec.com
April 29, 2025
Even when taken at face value, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the White House did not meet the evidentiary bar to prove that collective bargaining was incompatible with national security considerations for the majority of federal agencies.
A federal judge on Monday wrote that President Trump’s controversial invocation of a provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip two-thirds of federal employees of their collective bargaining rights on national security grounds was “mere pretext” for retaliating against unions resistant to his workforce policies.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman issued the finding Monday in a 46-page opinion explaining his decision last week to enjoin the administration from implementing the March executive order, following a lawsuit from the National Treasury Employees Union.
“The scope of the executive order when compared with the intent of Congress in passing the [Civil Service Reform Act], coupled with the surrounding statements in the [White House] fact sheet and [Office of Personnel Management] guidance—which strongly suggest that President Trump’s invocation of [the statute’s national security exemption] was mere pretext for retaliation and for accomplishing unrelated policy objectives—are persuasive reasons to believe NTEU will likely be successful on the merits of its claim,” Friedman wrote