An order signed by President Trump last month was aimed at stripping collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
A federal judge in Washington blocked President Trump from ending collective bargaining with unions representing federal workers, stymying a component of Mr. Trump’s sweeping effort to strip civil servants of job protections and assert more control over the federal bureaucracy.
Judge Paul L. Friedman of the Federal District Court in Washington ruled in favor of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents tens of thousands of federal workers across the government. Without including an opinion explaining his decision, Judge Friedman ruled that the executive order from Mr. Trump was unlawful, and he granted a temporary injunction blocking its implementation while the case proceeded.
“An opinion explaining the court’s reasoning will be issued within the next few days,” Judge Friedman wrote in the two-page order.
The order, if implemented, would strip collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers, effectively banning them from joining unions.
Those unions have been a major obstacle in Mr. Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal work force and reshape the government. With every stroke of the pen from Mr. Trump enacting new orders aimed at tightening control over the federal bureaucracy, federal worker unions have responded with lawsuits, winning at least temporary reprieves for some fired federal workers and blocking efforts to dismantle portions of the government.
Mr. Trump had framed his order stripping workers of labor protections as critical to protect national security. But the union noted that it targeted agencies across the government, some of which had no obvious national security portfolio, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency.
“The administration’s own issuances show that the president’s exclusions are not based on national security concerns,” the suit said, “but, instead, a policy objective of making federal employees easier to fire and political animus against federal sector unions.”