Agencies’ effort to unwind project labor agreement requirements ‘flatly contradict’ order establishing them, judge says

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., last week issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from implementing a pair of memos that greenlit “wholesale” exemptions to a Biden-era executive order mandating contractors for major federal construction projects strike accord with a unionized workforce before submitting a bid.

In 2022, then-President Biden signed an executive order mandating that federal contractors sign project labor agreements with subcontractors and associated unions on construction projects that cost at least $35 million. The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council issued a final rule implementing the edict in January 2024.

Rather than rescind the executive order and issue new regulations to unwind the policy, the Trump administration instead issued two memos exempting large scale projects within the Defense Department and projects at land ports of entry—governed by the General Services Administration—from PLA requirements.

In April, North America’s Building Trades Unions sued the administration, after contractors with whom the union had been negotiating PLAs abruptly broke off talks in light of the Biden-era mandate no longer applying to the associated project. The group argued that the two memos together violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the terms of the underlying executive order.

The government had argued that the unions lacked standing to sue, casting the end in negotiations as the independent decision of prospective contractors, not federal agencies. But U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an Obama appointee, disagreed.

“Plaintiffs’ alleged injury is neither hypothetical nor generalized, but immediate and particularized, and ongoing,” Contreras wrote. “It flows directly from the memoranda’s effect on federal contract practices for large-scale projects, which now direct contracting officers to omit PLA requirements from future solicitations without engaging in the individualized exception analysis mandated by the EO. This shift undermines plaintiffs’ ability to secure PLAs not only for specific ongoing projects, but it also affects plaintiffs’ ability across the full spectrum of future large-scale federal construction projects.”

The administration also argued that the exemptions issued by the Defense Department and GSA, known as class deviations, are not prohibited by the executive order or Federal Acquisition Regulations. Contreras, however, said the memos “flatly contradict” the executive order’s requirements that exemptions must be considered on a case-by-case basis, and that such exemptions cannot apply to already solicited contract opportunities.

“Here, the memoranda issued by DOD and GSA effectively nullify the mandatory PLA requirement imposed by Section 3 of the EO, which states that ‘agencies shall require’ PLAs on large-scale federal construction projects unless a particularized, contract-specific exception is properly documented before the solicitation date,” he wrote. “These memoranda instead purport to establish blanket class deviations and class exceptions—a legal maneuver explicitly foreclosed by the language of the EO as reinforced by the FAR.”

Contreras’ injunction blocks federal agencies from enforcing the two memos at the heart of the case. As of Tuesday afternoon, the Trump administration had not signaled whether it would appeal the ruling.