Lisa Rein reports for the Washington Post:
A federal judge late Friday dealt a victory to federal employees and the unions that represent them, invalidating overnight key provisions of a series of Trump administration executive orders aimed at making it easier to fire employees and weaken the unions.
The overnight ruling by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in Washington was a setback to the White House’s efforts to rein in the power of federal unions. Though federal employees’ pay is set by Congress, their unions have retained significant power even as private-sector unions have been in decline.
The three executive orders, issued just before Memorial Day, had sought to severely restrict the use of “official time” — on-duty time that union officials can spend representing their members in grievances and on other issues. The rules also limited issues that could be bargained over in union negotiations. And it rolled back the rights of workers deemed to be poor performers to appeal disciplinary action against them.
Jackson took issue with key elements of each order and enjoined the administration from enacting them.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest of the dozen unions to sue the administration over the executive orders, applauded the ruling. It called it a victory for public-sector unions and the protections Congress gave federal employees in 1978 when it guaranteed civil servants the right to bargain collectively over working conditions in the government.
“President Trump’s illegal action was a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Congress specifically guaranteed to the public-sector employees across this country who keep our federal government running every single day,” AFGE’s national president, J. David Cox Sr., said in a statement.
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Lawless actions directed at its perceived “enemies” under the guise of some bogus legal theory are a staple of the Trump/Sessions regime. As the ever disingenuous Sessions has proved recently, every time a Federal Judge quite properly calls him out for his lawless acts, he whines about interference with Executive authority and his authority as the chief legal official of the US. Here’s a guy that apparently got through law school and admitted to the bar without knowing or understanding what Chief Justice Marshall said and meant in probably the single most famous case in US history: Marbury v. Madison. No, Gonzo, you don’t get the final say on what the law is — that only appears to happen in the never-never land of the Immigration Courts!
The NAIJ, representing our nation’s Immigration Judges (I am a retired member), continues to fight not only for the civil service rights of the judges but for the fair and impartial judicial independence that benefits everyone in America. All of these have been under constant attack by Jeff Sessions and the Trump Administration.
PWS
08-27-18