Biden Union Contracting Order Suffers Legal Setbacks But Endures

Construction companies have racked up multiple legal victories over the past year and a half in their bid to eradicate former President Joe Biden’s pro-union contracting executive order, but they’ve failed in getting the order struck down or rescinded.

Biden’s 2022 executive order requires companies to have project labor agreements—pre-hire collective bargaining agreements with one or more labor organizations that establish terms and conditions of employment for a specific construction project—to win federal construction contracts worth $35 million or more.

To the disappointment of many in the construction industry, President Donald Trump has left the executive order alone, and his administration said that US agencies should use PLAs “when those agreements are practicable and cost effective, and blanket deviations prohibiting the use of PLAs are precluded.”

Companies, who view PLAs as costly and harmful to competition, have successfully challenged dozens of specific agreements in the US Court of Federal Claims. At the same time, however, construction contractors are still calling for a nationwide PLA ban that exceeds their grasp, as shown by an April US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decision. The appeals court said the PLA rule doesn’t clearly violate contract competition rules.

The mixed result for contractors signals that more one-off lawsuits are likely to come, representatives of construction companies said.

At this point, “the PLAs in 34 protests have been removed, with more protests pending,” said Dirk Haire of Burr & Forman LLP, who has represented contractors in litigation over PLAs. “The government has not successfully defended any of our PLA protests.”

If the Trump administration doesn’t rescind the executive order, “we will continue to remove them one at a time through protests,” Haire said.

Brian Turmail of Associated General Contractors of America, whose organization helped underwrite the development of the PLA litigation strategy, said that absent a full repeal of the executive order, his group has pressed the Trump administration “to adopt a more practical approach—shifting from a rigid, front-loaded requirement to one that is flexible, transparent, and workable in practice.”

But Betsy Barrett, director of communications with North America’s Building Trades Union, highlighted benefits of PLAs the US General Administration listed in a February determination and findings for a Hartford, Conn., federal courthouse procurement. PLAs provide predictable labor costs, a steady labor supply, coordination among multiple employers, and avoid labor-related disruptions, the document said.

The Trump administration “has been requiring PLA in contract solicitations in a manner that NABTU believes, for the most part, has been consistent” with the executive order, Barrett said.

Procurement Protests

Biden in February 2022 said his executive order would ensure that well-trained and highly skilled workers would handle big federal construction projects. Despite opposition to the order from GOP senators, Trump has kept it in place.

The US Office of Management and Budget didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Many construction companies say PLA requirements are unlawfully burdensome, including KBE Building Corp., which is challenging the Hartford courthouse procurement.

“Mandatory PLAs compel contractors to associate with labor unions when they would not otherwise do so,” KBE said in its complaint. The company also said the executive order and related regulations “are based on executive branch policy initiatives that aim to advance socioeconomic set-aside interests, but which are unsupported by an act of Congress.”

In one of the most significant PLA protests to date, MVL USA Inc. sued at the claims court in 2024 to challenge the US Army Corps of Engineers’ PLA requirement in a construction project in Washington state. Other contractors—challenging PLAs in Army Corps, Navy, and GSA procurements—joined MVL’s suit. Haire represents KBE and MVL, among other protesters.

Judge Ryan T. Holte sided with the contractors in MVL USA Inc. v. United States, in January 2025, stating that PLA requirements stifled competition in violation of the Competition in Contracting Act.

The agencies ignored their own market research concluding PLAs would be anti-competitive, the court said, and they merely cited the presidential policy to justify the PLA requirement.

The case became moot when agencies removed PLAs and canceled solicitations, Holte said in May 2025.

The claims court added, however, that it lacked authority to “change the rules of the game,” and issue a permanent injunction against the executive order.

Holte made another significant PLA ruling in December 2025, in Brasfield & Gorrie LLC v. United States, when it said the Army Corps failed to provide a specific justification for a PLA in a pump station project. The agency didn’t consider whether benefits of a PLA outweighed risks, like limiting the availability of skilled workers, the claims court said.

Neither the Army Corps nor the US Navy responded to a request for comment. The Justice Department also didn’t respond to a request for comment. GSA declined to comment.

The success of protests “may cause agencies to think twice about how they can avoid using PLAs,” said Michael Metz-Topodas of Saul Ewing LLP said. “But such decisions will depend on each project’s unique circumstances.”

The Order Stands

While the MVL protesters and others fought specific PLA requirements in the claims court, two trade groups argued that a federal district court should do what the claims court said it couldn’t, and vacate the executive order for violating several federal statutes and the First Amendment.

But the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida denied the groups’ motion for a preliminary injunction in March 2025, in Associated Builders and Contractors Florida First Coast Chapter v. General Services Administration.

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed that result. The executive order has exceptions to compliance, the opinion said, which creates a possibility of satisfying contract competition rules regardless of whether the government applies the exceptions in practice.

Associated Builders and Contractors will continue to fight the mandate, said Michael Bellaman, ABC’s president and CEO, noting that no presidential administration has stopped federal contractors from voluntarily entering into PLAs when an agreement “makes sense for their workforce.”