SCOTUS Win: Trump Can End Union Protections for Federal Workers

A liberal appeals court ruled in President Trump‘s favor and will allow him to end union protections for federal workers. He will move forward with an executive order, instructing a broad swath of government agencies to end collective bargaining with federal unions.

It will give him more control over the federal work force as the case plays out in court.

President Trump had framed his order, stripping workers of labor protections, as critical to protect national security. A group of affected unions representing over 1 million federal workers argued in the lawsuit that the order was a form of retaliation against unions that have participated in lawsuits opposing the president’s policies.

The three judge panel didn’t buy it, and they are famously liberal. They ruled in Mr. Trump‘s favor, writing that “ the president would have taken the same action even in the absence” of the union’s lawsuits. Even if some of the White House statements “reflect a degree of retaliatory animus,” they wrote, those statements, taken as a whole, also demonstrate “the president’s focus on national security.”

The panel sidestepped that claim, writing in the 15-page ruling that “we question whether we can take up such arguments, which invite us to assess whether the president’s stated reasons for exercising national security authority — clearly conferred to him by statute — were pretextual.”

The order, they continued, “conveys the president’s determination that the excluded agencies have primary functions implicating national security.”