A federal appeals court cleared the way Thursday for the Trump administration to move forward with an executive order exempting large swaths of the federal workforce from collective bargaining on national security grounds.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s preliminary injunction that had blocked implementation of the order, which strips bargaining rights from most federal agencies by invoking national security authorities.
The panel said the unions failed to show they were likely to succeed on their First Amendment retaliation claim, finding the administration had demonstrated it would have issued the order on national security grounds regardless of any protected union activity.
The decision clears the way for broader enforcement of the administration’s effort, which applies a rarely used provision of federal labor law governing collective bargaining rights for government employees to exempt agencies that perform intelligence, investigative or other national security functions.
