Another judge has dismissed the Trump administration's effort to pre-clear anti-union EO
A federal judge in Texas on Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s effort to attain the judicial greenlight to enforce a March executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of its collective bargaining rights.
The edict invoked a rarely used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip most federal employees of their collective bargaining rights under the auspices of national security. But before the order was published and announced, the Trump administration sued both the American Federation of Government Employees and National Treasury Employees Union in seemingly GOP-friendly federal district court jurisdictions seeking preemptive declarations that the order is lawful.
In May, a federal judge in Kentucky dismissed the case against NTEU, finding that the administration lacked standing, as federal case law has long barred jurists from issuing so-called “advisory opinions” about the legality of a law without an underlying injury. In a 27-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright, a Trump appointee in Texas’ Western District, followed suit in the case against AFGE.
“Plaintiffs ask this court to do something it should not and cannot do: issue a declaratory judgment pre-approving the acts of executive agencies absent a legally cognizable injury-in-fact,” Albright wrote. “This court is unable to identify a single instance in which a federal court has exercised jurisdiction over agencies seeking a pre-enforcement declaratory judgment approving their desired future course of conduct. Plaintiffs’ suit, however well-intentioned, is an unprecedented invitation for an advisory opinion—one that could open a Pandora’s Box of encouraging the executive branch to seek the judiciary’s blessing for every executive order prior to implementation.”
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/07/another-judge-has-dismissed-trump-administrations-effort-pre-clear-anti-union-eo/406953/