More unions sue following second edict banning them, alleging retaliation

A pair of independent unions on Tuesday sued the Trump administration over the president’s move last week add more than half a dozen agencies to a March executive order aimed at banning collective bargaining for most federal workers, alleging that the White House retaliated against them for exercising their union rights.

The pair of orders cite a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to exempt agencies that employ roughly two-thirds of the federal workforce from federal sector labor law on the premise that collective bargaining improperly interferes with national security work. The measures already is the subject of an array of legal challenges, all still moving through the federal judiciary.

The latest suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., comes from the National Weather Service Employees Organization, which represents workers in three National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offices targeted by last week’s order, as well as the Patent Office Professional Association, which represents U.S. Patent and Trademark Office employees. The National Treasury Employees Union, similarly filed suit on behalf of its USPTO employees' bargaining rights Wednesday afternoon.

Like other unions, their complaint alleges that the Trump administration has targeted them for decertification because they exerted their First Amendment rights to object to the White House’s personnel policies, each citing specific instances that occurred after the promulgation of the initial March edict.

POPA filed grievances in response to USPTO management’s May decision to unilaterally cancel telework for employees who lived within 50 miles of headquarters, in contravention of its union contract. NWSEO similarly grieved the disregard for its contract provision governing telework in April.

In a fact sheet accompanying last week’s executive order, the White House sought to justify Trump’s determination that the latest round of agencies’ “primary function” is national security-related work.

“Today, [the National Weather Service and National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service] provide weather and climate data that inform the weather forecasting used to plan U.S. military deployments,” the White House wrote. “[The] Invention Secrecy Act tasks the USPTO with reviewing inventions made in the United States, assessing whether their release could harm national security, and if so, issuing secrecy orders that prevent public disclosure.”

But these assertions aren’t true, the unions said. In the case of USPTO, the agency merely refers patent applications with potential national security implications to actual national security agencies, who then review the patent. Just 26 of the nearly 9,000 USPTO employees are engaged in that screening process, which applies to only 50 applications annually, out of a total pool of 600,000.

The justification for the NOAA subcomponents is similarly dubious.

“The NWS does not provide the military with weather forecasts for military operations,” the unions wrote. “The military departments have their own weather forecasting units (such as the Fleet Weather Centers in Norfolk and San Diego, the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center in Monterey . . . and many others) that provide forecasting and support for military operations. NESDIS does track and command three polar orbiting weather satellites known as the ‘Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’ along with NOAA’s own weather satellites. But [the Defense Department] will cease processing the data from these satellites in 2026 as they are replaced by a new generation of military weather satellites.”

USPTO and NOAA both informed their unions in the affected offices last week that they would no longer be recognized, “effective immediately.”