A judge on Saturday struck down key parts of the executive orders President Donald Trump signed in May that would make it easier to fire federal workers.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled Trump’s actions would “impair the ability of agency officials to bargain in good faith as Congress has directed.”

The decision marked another recent triumph for unions after many years of bad news from the Supreme Court and numerous states like Wisconsin. Missouri voters handed a resounding defeat to an anti-union law in a referendum earlier this month.


Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) praised the ruling, which he said “shut down some of Trump’s harshest attacks on federal workers.”

Great news: a federal judge just shut down some of Trump’s harshest attacks on federal workers.https://t.co/erO1q8Ev8a — Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) August 25, 2018

Sharon Block, a former Labor Department official under President Barack Obama, called the ruling a “stinging rebuke” for Trump.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union involved in the lawsuit against the White House’s executive orders, said “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” in a statement.


The New York Times reported that the Trump administration “will most likely appeal the decision to a federal circuit court, and could then appeal to the Supreme Court if it loses there.”