Trump’s Bid to End Union Contracts Is Unprecedented, Judge Says

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end collective bargaining agreements between federal agencies and employee unions appears to be far too sweeping in its scale, a San Francisco federal judge said at a hearing Wednesday.

“The executive order seems unprecedented to me in its scope and breath by taking hundreds of thousands of employees outside the purview of” the federal statue establishing collective bargaining rights for federal workers, Judge James Donato said.

He said that he wasn’t issuing a ruling from the bench.

The group of federal unions led by the American Federation of Government Employees are asking Donato, a Barack Obama appointee, to enter a preliminary injunction halting the Trump administration to implementing the executive order. The group sued in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in April, arguing that the anti-union directive violated their members’ free speech and due process rights.

The unions pointed to a fact sheet that came with the executive order targeting the viewpoints of the unions, which they argued was a violation of the First Amendment.

The hearing comes about a week after a federal judge in Waco, Texas, heard a related case brought by the Trump administration, asking for the court to sign off on its decision to void bargaining agreements with the AFGE and other unions.

At the Wednesday hearing, Donato said he wasn’t hearing a compelling reason why he shouldn’t issue an injunction, given the evidence that the executive order will dramatically upend federal labor rights.

“I can set you on an expedited trial,” Donato said. “Why not just keep everything in place? Why do we need to have an abrupt change right now?

The administration largely relied on the argument that under the 1978 statute governing federal collective bargaining, the president can exempt any agency that primarily engages in intelligence or national security work. Justice Department attorney Tyler Becker told Donato that President Jimmy Carter had engaged in similar cancellations of bargaining agreements by exempting 45 agencies from the bargaining law.

Still, Donato didn’t appear convinced, asking why allergy researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases are engaging in national security work. Tyler responded that the agency engages in investigative work, which can also be exempted under the statute.

“You know I’m a life time allergy sufferer,” Donato said. “It never occurred to me until just now that I might be a national security risk.”

Bredhoff & Kaiser PLLC and Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow LLP represent the unions.

The case is AFGE v. Trump, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-03070, 6/18/25.