Court Temporarily Blocks Ban on Bargaining by Defense Department Teachers Unions

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

A district court judge has temporarily blocked a Trump administration ban on collective bargaining by two teachers unions in Department of Defense schools.

Judge Paul Friedman issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed this spring by the Federal Education Association and Antilles Consolidated Education Association, which represent more than 5,500 teachers, librarians and counselors in the 161 schools under the Department of Defense Education Activity. The agency educates 67,000 children on military bases worldwide.

The union sued the Trump administration over a March executive order that stripped collective bargaining rights from two-thirds of federal service workers. The order impacted the Departments of Justice, Defense, Veteran Affairs, Treasury, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Federal Education Association has been negotiating teachers contracts with the Department of Defense since 1970, while the Antilles Consolidated Education Association has bargained on behalf of Puerto Rico educators since 1976, according to the lawsuit. The current collective bargaining agreements for both unions were approved in 2023 and are set to expire in summer 2028.

But since the order was issued, the lawsuit says, the Department of Defense Education Activity has discontinued negotiations, stopped participation in grievance proceedings and prohibited union representation during educator disciplinary meetings. Members are also no longer allowed to conduct union work during the school day. Requests from educators to access a union sick leave bank with 13,000 donated hours have also been ignored, according to the suit.

“These actions, taken together, essentially terminate the respective collective bargaining agreements and thus cause irreparable harm,” Friedman said in his decision.

A 1978 federal statute allows collective bargaining in the civil service sector. The suit argued that while presidents have the authority to exclude an agency if its primary function involves intelligence, investigation or national security work, “Many, if not most, of the agencies and agency subdivisions swept up in the executive order’s dragnet do little to no national security work, much less do they have a primary function [of] intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative [work].”

The agency declined to comment on ongoing legal proceedings. In a reply to the unions’ lawsuit, Trump administration attorneys said the executive order was within the law and that reversing it would be costly.

“Rather than maintaining the status quo, it would force [the Department of Defense] to undo actions it has already taken to implement the executive order, causing significant disruption and resource expenditures,” the lawyers wrote.

In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized a few exemptions for agencies related to the Air Force and Army, but not the teachers unions — despite a push from 45 lawmakers to exclude the school system.

“Ensuring that DoDEA educators and personnel retain collective bargaining protections will ensure that DoDEA can continue to recruit and retain the best staff in support of its mission,” the congressional members wrote in a letter. “Collective bargaining safeguards the public interest, and its history in DoDEA has demonstrated better outcomes for mission readiness, and stronger connections between military-connected families and those who serve them.”

An appeal from the Trump administration is pending. A similar lawsuit from six unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, resulted in an injunction, but a federal appeals court reversed it in August.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter