A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s plan to limit collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit lifted a lower court’s block on President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 14,251, which excludes numerous federal agencies and subdivisions from federal labor protections based on national security concerns.

Background

Six labor unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), filed the lawsuit on behalf of approximately 800,000 federal civilian employees. The targeted agencies cover vast swaths of the federal workforce, including the Departments of State, Justice, and Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and nearly all of the Departments of Energy, Defense, and Treasury.

The legal battle centers on the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), which protects the rights of federal employees to organize and bargain collectively. However, the law allows the president to exclude specific agencies if they primarily handle “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” and if normal labor rules cannot be applied “in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations.”

Court Ruling

The Ninth Circuit panel, consisting of Circuit Judges John B. Owens, Bridget S. Bade, and Daniel A. Bress, disagreed with the lower court’s reasoning on the merits of the case. Writing for the panel, Judge Bress stated that “on this record the government has shown that the President would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct.”

The court noted that the executive order contains no retaliatory language on its face. Even when factoring in the blunt language of the White House Fact Sheet, the panel decided the administration’s primary motivation was rooted in legitimate national security priorities.

Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.