White House Seeks Summary Judgment in National Treasury Employees Union Case
President Donald Trump would have issued an order ending collective bargaining for the FCC and numerous other federal agencies even if he didn’t have retaliatory motives, the White House said Monday in filings in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The filings were made in the National Treasury Employees Union’s challenge of Trump’s executive order that removed collective bargaining rights at roughly 40 agencies on national security grounds, affecting two-thirds of the federal workforce (see 2506100045). They included a motion for summary judgment, as well as a response to NTEU's own motion for summary judgment.
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The government said the evidence that NTEU “cherry-picked” to show that the order was retaliation for union litigation against White House policies is “insufficient” because “the President would have issued the Executive Order absent Plaintiff’s continued litigation against the Administration.” Trump signed the order “in service of two of his top policy priorities: protecting Americans from threats to our national security and improving the efficiency and efficacy of the federal workforce.”
The White House also defended its characterization of agencies such as the FCC and the Bureau of Land Management as having “a primary function [of] intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.” Its filings pointed to the FCC’s Council of National Security -- created by Chairman Brendan Carr three months ago (see 2503130012) -- as an example of its national security focus.
In addition, the government reiterated arguments that the court lacks the authority to question the president’s decisions on national security and doesn’t have jurisdiction over the matter. Judge Paul Friedman previously rejected those arguments when he granted NTEU’s request for a temporary injunction against the executive order. That injunction was stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in May.