Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Coalition of unions, nonprofits, and local governments sue over ‘unconstitutional reorganization’ of federal government, (Apr 29, 2025)
Organizations Mentioned:American Federation of Government Employees | Federal Labor Relations Authority | National Treasury Employees Union
By Marjorie Johnson, J.D.
The 115-page complaint asks a federal court to enjoin the agencies implementing the “unconstitutional presidential order” seeking to dramatically reduce the federal workforce.
A coalition of labor organizations, nonprofit groups, and local governments have joined forces and filed a lawsuit in a California federal district court in San Francisco seeking to “hold unlawful and stop the unconstitutional dismantling of the federal government by the President of the United States on a scale unprecedented in this country’s history and in clear excess of his authority.” The plaintiffs claim that Trump’s Executive Order 14210, which requires federal agencies to work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to undergo mass layoffs and restructuring under the guise of enacting a “critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy,” violates the U.S Constitution’s fundamental Separation of Powers.
The lawsuit was filed against President Trump, DOGE, Musk, and a myriad of other defendants by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and several other labor unions, numerous nonprofit agencies, and cities and counties in California, Illinois, Washington, and Texas. The complaint argues that President Trump “does not possess authority to reorganize, downsize, or otherwise transform the agencies of the federal government, unless and until Congress authorizes such action,” urging that “[w]hen the President takes for himself the legislative power of Congress to recreate federal agencies in the manner he sees fit, he violates the Constitution.”
In a separate lawsuit filed by the National Treasury Employees Union and four other labor unions, a federal district court in the District of Columbia denied the plaintiffs’ bid for preliminary injunctive relief in their challenge to the workforce reductions, holding that their claims must instead be brought before the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
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