The majority of the appeals court said the union failed to show it suffering from the kind of irreparable harm that justifies the interim injunction.
On May 17, a federal court of appeals allowed the Trump administration to proceed with plans to exclude collective bargaining by workers in more than a dozen federal agencies.
The injunction issued by District Court Judge Paul Friedman for the District of Columbia, frozen the administration’s executive order targeting post-supervisory collective bargaining with the National Treasury Department employee union that filed the lawsuit.
A fact sheet released by the White House in the order states that these agencies have a “national security mission” that allows hostile federal unions to interfere with institutional control.
The order also allows the administration to “ensure that national security crucial agencies can carry out their duties without delay and protect the American people,” and that the administrative department needs “responsive accountable civil servants to protect national security.”
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A majority in the Court of Appeals said the union failed to show it would suffer irreparable damages that justify the interim injunction issued by Friedman on April 25th.
Circuit Judges Karen Henderson and Justin Walker wrote that lower court judges’ injunctions would hinder Trump’s national security privileges if they allowed them to be in effect.
Trump correctly relied on national security immunity for exemptions he said he was “as a major functional intelligence, anti-intellectuality, investigation or national security activity,” the pair wrote.
“To preserve the president’s autonomy under a law that expressly recognizes that his national security expertise is within the scope of the public interest,” they wrote. “If not, we’ll give the courts what the Constitution gave to Congress and the President.”
Walker and Henderson also said Friedman failed to force the union to pay financial debts in order to seek relief from the executive order when the lawsuit arises in court. They said bonds were “generally necessary” in such cases, and that “in the Treasury lawsuit, “$0 was a ‘appropriate bond’.”
Circuit J. Michelle Childs opposed the verdict. She argued that the Trump administration questioned the arguments from government lawyers in search of emergency relief before the court of appeals to block Friedman’s order, saying it would not impose a significant part of the executive order.
“The government has not identified any impending harm that guarantees emergency relief,” Childs wrote. “The extraordinary use of our impartial power requires more than the vague claims of harm offered here. In the absence of irreparable injuries, the argument of government merit is more suited to the panels designated to hear them.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
