Federal Unions Dissolved: Orders, Canceled Contracts, Lawsuits

Beginning in March 2025, the Trump administration dissolved federal unions’ contracts across most of the government by invoking a national security exemption in the Civil Service Reform Act, stripping collective bargaining rights from roughly one million federal employees at more than 30 agencies. Two executive orders, a wave of agency-level contract terminations, and directives from the Office of Personnel Management drove the rollback. Unions have filed at least a dozen lawsuits with mixed results, and as of mid-2026 the underlying legality has not been settled.

The Two Executive Orders

On March 27, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14251, “Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs.” It cited 5 U.S.C. § 7103(b)(1), a provision that lets the president exclude agencies from collective bargaining when their primary function involves intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.¹ The order swept in components of more than 30 agencies, including Defense, Veterans Affairs, Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury, Energy, HHS, State, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, EPA, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.²

Executive Order 14343 followed on August 28, 2025, adding NASA, NOAA (including the National Weather Service), the Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and hydropower facilities under the Bureau of Reclamation.³ Together, the orders reached about 84% of the unionized federal workforce, more than one million employees, according to the Economic Policy Institute.⁴

One group was carved out: local agency police officers, security guards, and firefighters kept their bargaining rights.

Which Agencies Canceled Contracts

Agencies moved quickly. The Department of Veterans Affairs terminated collective bargaining agreements for most of its roughly 370,000 bargaining-unit employees on August 6, 2025, notifying AFGE, NAGE, NFFE, National Nurses United, and SEIU that their contracts were canceled immediately. The VA had already stopped withholding union dues from most employees’ paychecks in April 2025. Contracts for about 4,000 VA police, firefighters, and security guards remained in place.⁵

Other terminations followed a similar timeline:

EPA canceled its union contracts on August 8, 2025.⁴
The Federal Bureau of Prisons ended its agreement with the Council of Prison Locals on September 25, 2025, affecting more than 30,000 employees.⁴
DHS terminated the TSA contract covering roughly 47,000 workers on December 12, 2025.⁴
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered nearly all remaining DoD collective bargaining agreements terminated within 24 hours in an April 9, 2026, memo.⁶

After the Ninth Circuit vacated a key injunction in February 2026, OPM Director Scott Kupor issued a February 12, 2026 memo directing covered agencies to proceed with terminating or modifying their contracts.⁷ The guidance went further than canceling contracts. Agencies were told to reclaim office space and equipment used by unions, stop approving taxpayer-funded union time, withdraw from ongoing negotiations, cancel pending arbitrations, “disregard” grievances from employees no longer covered, and revise personnel records.⁸ Agencies had to submit monthly progress reports to OPM until every termination was complete.⁹

What Affected Employees Lost

For workers in excluded units, the loss was practical and immediate. Payroll dues deductions stopped. Union office space and equipment were reclaimed. Employees lost the right to union representation during disciplinary investigations, the right to file grievances through negotiated procedures, and access to arbitration. Ongoing negotiations were abandoned, and OPM told agencies to simply “disregard” grievances from workers no longer deemed eligible for bargaining.⁸

Paula Schelling Soldner, president of AFGE’s food inspection locals, said that without a contract, inspectors would “think twice about stopping the line when they see a diseased animal on its way into our food supply — justifiably fearing retaliation from a processor or a politicized supervisor.”¹⁰

How the Lawsuits Have Gone

AFGE has been the most active litigant, with NTEU, IFPTE, AFSCME, the Federal Education Association, and National Nurses United filing or joining suits of their own.¹¹ Two lines of argument dominate. Some unions say the orders exceed presidential authority, arguing the national security exemption was meant as a narrow carve-out for agencies like the CIA rather than a tool for stripping rights from weather forecasters, food inspectors, and Defense Department schoolteachers.¹² Others allege the orders were First Amendment retaliation for union criticism and prior lawsuits.¹³

Ninth Circuit: AFGE v. Trump

In June 2025, U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction, finding the retaliation claim “plausible” and noting that the administration’s own fact sheet showed “a clear point of view that is hostile to federal labor unions.”¹³ On February 26, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel vacated that injunction, finding the unions unlikely to succeed on the merits because the government showed it would have acted regardless of any retaliatory motive given “legitimate grounding in national security concerns.” The panel did confirm that federal district courts have jurisdiction over these challenges, rejecting the argument that unions had to go through the Federal Labor Relations Authority.¹⁴

D.C. Circuit: NTEU and AFSA

NTEU and the American Foreign Service Association won district court injunctions, but the D.C. Circuit stayed both in May and June 2025 without ruling on the merits, finding the unions had not shown irreparable harm.¹⁵ The full court denied en banc review in July 2025.¹⁶

Injunctions That Held

Some challenges succeeded. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., issued preliminary injunctions protecting IFPTE and Federal Education Association members. In the IFPTE case decided September 30, 2025, Friedman ruled the executive order was likely “ultra vires” and called the national security rationale a “pretext” for retaliation, noting the president had failed to conduct the “individualized determination” for each bargaining unit that the statute requires.¹² The D.C. Circuit dissolved a stay on the Federal Education Association injunction on September 25, 2025.¹⁷ Both injunctions remained in effect as of mid-2026, protecting workers at agencies including EPA, the Department of Energy, and DoD schools.

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the VA to reinstate its master agreement with AFGE in March 2026, finding VA Secretary Doug Collins had violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. The VA complied on paper but took the position that reinstatement did not oblige it to follow the contract’s terms. AFGE reported the agency was still denying union representation during disciplinary proceedings and withholding contractual benefits including paid parental leave.¹⁸ A separate order from a Washington state court kept the TSA’s 2024 collective bargaining agreement in force after a second termination attempt.¹¹

Congressional Response

In April 2025, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) introduced the Protect America’s Workforce Act (H.R. 2550), which would nullify both executive orders and restore bargaining rights. A discharge petition reached the 218-signature threshold in November 2025, forcing a floor vote, and the bill passed the House on December 11, 2025, by a vote of 231 to 195 with 20 Republicans joining every Democrat.¹⁹

A Senate companion (S. 2837) from Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), co-sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in September 2025 and had seen no further action as of mid-2026.²⁰

A parallel effort ran through defense appropriations. The House Armed Services Committee adopted an amendment from Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) in June 2026 barring the Defense Department from spending fiscal 2027 funds to implement the executive order; it passed committee 30 to 26.²¹ A nearly identical provision had passed the full House the previous year but was stripped in conference over what was described as a “lack of support in the Senate.”²²

Changes at the Federal Labor Relations Authority

On March 24, 2026, the FLRA issued an interim final rule transferring authority over union elections, bargaining-unit determinations, and decertification petitions from career regional directors to the agency’s three politically appointed members. The rule also eliminated a two-level appeal process in place since 1983. FLRA member Anne Wagner dissented, calling the changes “the biggest changes to the FLRA’s representation case processing in nearly 43 years.”²³ Eight unions representing over one million employees sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleging the FLRA violated the Administrative Procedure Act by bypassing notice-and-comment rulemaking.²⁴

Where Things Stand in Mid-2026

The administration has largely succeeded in ending collective bargaining across the federal government. Contracts have been terminated at the VA, EPA, DoD, Bureau of Prisons, FEMA, USCIS, and other agencies.⁶ The remaining pockets of protection exist under court orders: IFPTE and Federal Education Association members at certain agencies, TSA workers under the Washington state order, and the VA master agreement nominally reinstated by the Rhode Island judge, though compliance is contested.

The underlying legality of the executive orders has not been decided. Every ruling so far has been on preliminary injunctions or stays rather than a final judgment. The Ninth Circuit itself noted the case could “reach a different conclusion” once the district court develops a “fully developed factual record.”¹⁴ The Protect America’s Workforce Act passed the House but has stalled in the Senate. Whether one million federal workers permanently lose the right to collective bargaining is still an open question in both the courts and Congress.

1
The White House. Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs
2
The White House. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Exempts Agencies With National Security Missions From Federal Collective Bargaining Requirements
3
The White House. Further Exclusions From the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program
4
Economic Policy Institute. Executive Order on Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs
5
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. VA Terminates Union Contracts for Most Bargaining Unit Employees
6
Federal News Network. DoD Moves to End Most Collective Bargaining Agreements
7
Federal News Network. OPM Directs Agencies to Move Forward With Ending Collective Bargaining
8
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Frequently Asked Questions: Executive Order 14251
9
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Implementation of Executive Orders 14251 and 14343
10
Federal News Network. Here Are the Agencies That Have Canceled Collective Bargaining So Far
11
AFGE. Summary of AFGE Lawsuits Against Trump
12
Government Executive. Judge Blocks Trump’s Anti-Union Executive Order for IFPTE-Represented Workers
13
Federal News Network. Appeals Court Axes Injunction on Trump’s Collective Bargaining Rollback
14
Government Executive. Appeals Court Declines to Block Trump’s Anti-Union EOs
15
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. NTEU v. Trump, No. 25-5157
16
Government Executive. Trump’s Anti-Union EO Can Remain in Effect During Challenge, Appellate Court Says
17
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Federal Education Association v. Trump
18
Government Executive. VA Court Order Requires “We Reinstate” Union Contract, Not Honor Its Terms
19
Federal News Network. House Passes Bill to Restore Collective Bargaining for Federal Employees
20
U.S. Congress. S. 2837 — Protect America’s Workforce Act
21
Federal News Network. HASC Challenges Trump’s EO Ending Bargaining Rights for DoD Workers
22
Government Executive. House Strips Its Own Provision Protecting Defense Civilians’ Union Rights From NDAA
23
Federal News Network. Unions Sue FLRA Over Plans to Politicize Labor Representation Decisions
24
AFGE. Federal Employee Unions File Lawsuit to Block Unlawful FLRA Rule