9th Circuit vacates injunction on Trump order limiting federal employee union rights

President Trump is trying to remove major agencies from collective bargaining coverage, and federal employee unions won a broad preliminary injunction against the Executive Order (EO). But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings apply to all California employers) has now vacated that injunction, holding that national security supplied an adequate and independent basis for the EO. The decision doesn’t bless the order, but it makes clear that First Amendment retaliation claims may face a difficult path when the president invokes a statute expressly assigning him national security judgment. And how important is it that the president has made many hostile comments about federal unions? 

Does national security trump collective bargaining? 

The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute protects the rights of federal employees to join unions and requires federal agencies to bargain in good faith. But the statute also gives the president authority to exclude agencies or subdivisions from coverage when the agency has a primary intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security function and when collective bargaining rights impair national security requirements.