Voice of America Workers Union Sues Trump For Pulling Out of CBA

Unions representing employees at state-funded media companies filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to protect its collective bargaining agreement after the agency stopped recognizing it.

President Donald Trump and federal officials violated the First and Fifth Amendments when they pulled out of the parties’ contract on August 29 and stripped workers of their collective bargaining rights, said two unions—the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Government Employees—in a lawsuit filed with the US District Court for the District of Columbia Friday.

The unions said in their complaint that Trump and Kari Lake, acting chief executive officer for the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees the broadcaster Voice of America, were unlawfully retaliating against it for opposing agency layoffs and other administrative actions.

The lawsuit joins a growing list of litigation around Trump’s efforts to nullify collective bargaining agreements for over a million federal workers and widen a loophole which exempts national security roles from statutory labor protections.

USAGM was included in a second executive order in August, which also hit the US Patent and Trademark Office and the National Weather Service.

According to the complaint, the White House claimed that USAGM was an arm of the nation’s diplomatic service and therefore “supporting U.S. national security is one of its key functions.”

The unions are represented by Bredhoff & Kaiser PLLC. The administration is represented by the Justice Department.

The case is AFSCME v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-03306, complaint filed 9/19/25.