Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—IBEW becomes latest union to sue over executive orders relating to collective bargaining, (Nov 3, 2025)
Organizations Mentioned:International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.
Executive Orders 14251 and 14343, they argue, “plainly contradict” section 704 of the CSRA and they allege that they also violate the First and Fifth Amendments.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Government Coordinating Council 1, along with several IBEW locals, have filed suit against President Trump, the Departments of Energy and the Interior, and their representative secretaries, alleging that they have acted unlawfully under federal statutory law and the U.S. Constitution with regard to their treatment of CBAs pursuant to Trump’s executive orders.
Violate CSRA. Specifically, they allege that E.O. 14251 and E.O. 14343, both relating to “exclusions” from federal-labor management relations programs and purporting to eliminate collective bargaining rights for most federal workers, “plainly contradict” Section 704 of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA). They allege that, as to the IBEW plaintiffs and the employees they represent, “Section 704 was intended to “preserve unchanged the scope and substance of the existing collective bargaining relationship between the employees’ representatives and the agencies involved” by “exclud[ing] these employees from the restrictions on the scope of collective bargaining under chapter 71….”
As well as U.S. Constitution. In addition to violating Section 704, they allege that the executive orders also violate the First Amendment because they are in retaliation for the union and its members’ political advocacy and their opposition to the Trump administration’s policies, including litigation they have commenced against the administration. They also allege that the orders violate the Fifth Amendment because they strip away contractual rights and protections from federal employees with due process and also “unilaterally abrogate property rights guaranteed by a contract with the federal government.”
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in D.C.; the case is No. 1:25-cv-03826.
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