By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Friday lifted a judge’s order blocking U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of the ability to engage in union bargaining with U.S. agencies.
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold an injunction issued by a lower court judge that had been obtained by six unions including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).
U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco in June had issued the injunction blocking 21 agencies from implementing Trump’s March executive order exempting many federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions.
Donato concluded Trump’s order retaliated against unions deemed critical of the president and that had sued over his efforts to overhaul the government, including the mass firings of agency employees, violating their right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
But the 9th Circuit panel said Trump’s order on its face “does not express any retaliatory animus,” and it agreed with the Trump administration that the president “would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct.”
The 9th Circuit panel included U.S. Circuit Judge John Owens, an Obama appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judges Bridget Bade and Daniel Bress, two Trump appointees. Another federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., had in May paused a similar order that had also blocked Trump’s order.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley in a statement called the Friday ruling “a setback for First Amendment rights in America.” The 9th Circuit put the injunction on hold pending a further appeal, and Kelley said the union is “confident in our ability to ultimately prevail.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s order exempted more than a dozen federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions. They include the Departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, and Health and Human Services.
Eliminating collective bargaining would allow agencies to alter working conditions and fire or discipline workers more easily, and it could prevent unions from challenging Trump administration initiatives in court.
Trump’s executive order exempted agencies that he said “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” from collective bargaining obligations, significantly expanding an existing exception for workers with duties implicating national security.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Tom Hogue)
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