DOJ Civil Rights Lawyers Try to Unionize Amid Uncertain Future

Lawyers in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division have launched a union organizing campaign with an aggressive timeline to try securing bargaining status ahead of the next presidential administration.

The attempt to form what would be DOJ’s first known union of litigators—parallel to a more advanced effort inside the department’s environmental division—is focused on maintaining “stable” working conditions, such as telework flexibility, in the face of an uncertain future. Employee organizers are also trying to overcome a “widespread misunderstanding” among Civil Rights Division lawyers that they’re ineligible to unionize, according to materials disseminated to staff in late July and obtained by Bloomberg Law.

Organizers don’t name former President Donald Trump in the emails to colleagues, but their agency’s equal justice portfolio, including voting rights and policing investigations, has experienced significant shifts depending on the political party in power. Their bid comes as the Republican presidential nominee has promised to revive his first-term initiative that sought to erode federal civil servant job security and his allies make plans to overhaul DOJ civil rights enforcement including by focusing on anti-white discrimination.

“This effort is non partisan, and we believe a union would benefit our employees during any administration,” said the attorney union steering committee in a statement to Bloomberg Law.

The employee organizing committee is aiming to hold a representation election by October 2024—a secret ballot process requiring majority approval for certification. Although that’s a compressed schedule compared to typical union drives, the committee said that in their first week after launching, they’ve already collected signatures of support from more than 30% of the 365 lawyers they estimate are eligible for the bargaining unit.

That would meet the minimum legal threshold to apply for a representation election, but organizers are waiting to do so until they reach 50% support.

“We believe it is in all of our interest to hold an election as soon as possible,” the committee emailed colleagues.

A DOJ spokesman declined to comment.

Trump Order

The employee organizers and the National Treasury Employees Union, the federal sector labor organization they’ve chosen to represent them, are highlighting how the union could try to safeguard civil rights attorneys from the planned return of Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” executive order, should he retake the presidency. That order, which President Joe Biden quickly revoked, authorized federal agencies to reassign policymaking employees to a new civil service status that would make them easier to terminate.

“Employees at the Civil Rights Division, like federal workers across government, are concerned about maintaining the nonpartisan, merit-based civil service, and NTEU would be proud to stand with them to defend it,” said Doreen Greenwald, NTEU’s national president, in a statement.

The Civil Rights Division’s workforce, which has a history of tension between career employees and political appointees in past GOP administrations, is cited by Trump’s supporters as an example of bureaucrats who should be removed if they refuse to carry out a president’s priorities.

Alumni of the office have spoken out about how the Trump administration undermined its priorities of combating racially discriminatory voting policies, prosecuting hate crimes, and investigating police abuse.

The conservative Project 2025 agenda authored by Trump’s allies paid particular attention to the division, calling for removing its authority to prosecute election offenses, enforcing immigration more aggressively, and providing it with a “vast expansion” of political appointees.

“We want to continue to vigorously protect the civil rights of the American people, and we believe unionizing will help us be even more effective in doing this important work,” the organizing committee said in its statement. The committee didn’t specifically address a question about Project 2025.

Before the division’s line attorneys learn who is president next year, the organizers must contend with possible efforts by their current management to declare them ineligible for bargaining.

Some Civil Rights Division lawyers in recent weeks received updates to their federal employment paperwork with a revised code indicating they’re no longer eligible for a bargaining unit, the employee organizers said in information they distributed internally. The codes were changed shortly after the National Treasury Employees Union submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the division for information on which staff were eligible to unionize.

“We are hopeful that these changes are an administrative error” and “we are communicating with the relevant channels regarding this issue,” NTEU said in a list of frequently asked questions that was sent to employees and posted on a newly-created website.