Federal judge halts Trump’s order to end collective bargaining rights for many federal workers

A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to terminate the collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal employees.

A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to terminate the collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal employees. Judge James Donato of the US District Court in San Francisco granted the preliminary injunction requested by a coalition of unions whose members would be stripped of their collective bargaining rights under Trump’s executive order. However, Donato’s decision clashes with a May ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which lifted a different judge’s block on Trump’s order pertaining to another union’s members. Donato, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said the unions that brought the case before him had “demonstrated a serious question as to whether their First Amendment rights have been violated.” The judge said he was blocking the executive order pending a trial over the order’s constitutionality. “Plaintiffs have raised serious questions under the First Amendment that warrant further litigation,” he wrote, adding that the unions have shown they would face “a strong likelihood of irreparable harm from the loss of their collective bargaining and allied rights.” The Trump administration has the option of appealing Donato’s ruling to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. At issue is Trump’s unprecedented executive order from March that seeks to abolish multiple agencies’ union contracts in the name of national security. It would apply to departments including State, Veterans Affairs and Justice, as well as smaller agencies such as the National Science Foundation and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.