Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, REMEDIES, DAMAGES—D.D.C.: Emergency injunction to prevent removal of records from Goddard Space Center denied, (Apr 30, 2026)

By Nicholas Kaster, J.D.

The employees failed to explain how the Archivist-approved NASA Archival Collections Schedule was “unlawful or inadequate” under the FRA.

A federal district court has denied a motion for an emergency temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction arising from the decision by NASA to cease in-person services at its largest research library located on the campus of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The suit, brought by two NASA-affiliated scientists and a labor organization representing federal employees, contended that NASA's decision to shutter the Goddard Library and take its database offline violated the Federal Records Act (FRA) and the APA. However, the complaint failed to show how NASA's plans to repurpose the Goddard Library space would cause irreparable harm. The challenges to NASA’s Archival Collections Schedule were also ruled to be inadequate (Williams v. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, No. 26-cv-564 (CRC) (D.D.C. Apr. 29, 2026)).

Goddard Library. In late 2025, NASA ceased in-person services at the agency's largest research library located on the campus of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland. It also initiated a 60-day assessment of the library collection to determine which materials would be preserved by the agency and suspended access to the NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, a permanent archive for space mission documentation.

Lawsuit. Two NASA affiliated scientists and a labor organization representing federal employees at GSFC filed suit against NASA, the NASA Administrator, and the Archivist of the United States. They alleged that NASA's decision to shutter the Goddard Library and take the Database offline violates the Federal Records Act (FRA) and the APA. They moved for an emergency temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction, warning of the “imminent threat” that federal records and unique materials in the Goddard Library collection will be permanently lost unless the court intervenes.

The court convened a scheduling conference, during which NASA represented that (1) it took the Database offline and does not intend to delete it; (2) the materials that NASA sends to the Glenn Research Center will not be destroyed; and (3) the agency would pause the shipment of materials from the Goddard Library to the General Services Administration (GSA) through March 2026. NASA has since clarified that NASA will "pause all previously scheduled shipments of materials to GSA until at least April 30, 2026."

The suit sought: (1) to enjoin NASA from "carrying out any disposition, destruction, shredding, dispersal, reclassification, transfer, commingling, or other irreversible alteration of federal records and research materials" associated with the Goddard Library and the Database; (2) to require that NASA and the Archivist maintain and preserve the “provenance and chain-of-custody” of any materials that have already been boxed or moved; (3) an order preventing NASA from closing the Goddard Library and disabling the Database to the extent necessary to provide an interim, controlled access process to identify and obtain specific materials necessary for ongoing work and for litigation purposes.

Closure, APA and irreparable harm. The federal employees’ complaint alleged that NASA's decision to close the Goddard Library violates the APA. Their motion for preliminary injunctive relief largely focused on the removal of material from the Goddard Library, rather than the closure of the library itself, but it reiterated that employees have "concrete reliance interests" in keeping the library open. However, the court ruled that the employees were not entitled to preliminary relief on this claim because they failed to establish irreparable harm arising from the Goddard Library's closure.

The allegations of irreparable harm focused exclusively on the potential loss of records from the Goddard Library, not the closure of the physical library space. For example, the employees described an “active packing-and-removal operation at the Goddard Library.” They asked the court to enjoin the Goddard Library's closure “to the extent necessary to provide an interim, controlled access process” for them to identify and obtain specific materials.

However, said the court, the employees “have not explained how NASA's plans to repurpose the Goddard Library space would cause irreparable harm if they could still access the materials that were once housed there.” Accordingly, the court ruled that they were not entitled to preliminary relief based solely on NASA's decision to permanently shutter the Goddard Library.

Materials removed and FRA. The employees were primarily concerned about the “disposition or destruction” of records in the Goddard Library that they alleged “will cause permanent, unrecoverable loss.” They sought two forms of preliminary relief. First, they requested an injunction that would, among other things, bar NASA from carrying out any disposition of materials from the Goddard Library and compel the agency to produce an inventory of the materials slated for removal. Second, they asked the court to order the NASA Administrator and Archivist to perform their “nondiscretionary” duty to notify the Attorney General about the “actual, impending, or threatened unlawful destruction or removal” of records from the Goddard Library.

The employees sought an injunction preventing NASA from implementing or carrying out its planned disposition of the Goddard Library materials and requiring the agency to “maintain and preserve, under litigation hold, the provenance and chain-of-custody of any materials” processed by its team of librarians. To justify this requested relief, they contended that the NASA Archival Collections Schedule, which took effect in September 2025, was arbitrary and capricious and contrary to the FRA's recordkeeping requirements, and promulgated in excess of statutory authority.

The court, however, found that the employees failed to make the required showing to obtain preliminary injunctive relief. The employees failed to explain how the NASA Archival Collections Schedule was deficient under the FRA. The complaint broadly alleged that NASA's records schedules “eliminated or materially diluted mandatory safeguards governing the identification and preservation of historically significant and research-valuable records during mass disposition events.” It further contended that the schedules authorized NASA to determine in the first instance whether records warranted continued preservation. But when the court specifically asked at oral argument how the NASA Archival Collections Schedule was "inadequate" under the FRA, the employees disavowed any argument “about the irregularity of the schedule.” Without more precise factual allegations that highlight which particular deficiencies make the challenge to the NASA Archival Collections Schedule inadequate, said the court, the employees’ challenges to the adequacy of the records schedule—to the extent they have not been waived—amount to “conclusory allegations” insufficient for preliminary injunctive relief. The employees have not explained how the Archivist-approved NASA Archival Collections Schedule is “unlawful or inadequate” under the FRA, the court concluded. Accordingly, there was not a sufficient basis to grant the requested injunction.

Enforcement action by the NASA administrator and archivist. The employees next sought an injunction compelling the NASA Administrator and Archivist to fulfill their obligations under the FRA to “protect records from actual, impending, or threatened unlawful destruction or removal” through “referral to the Attorney General and notification to Congress,” citing 44 U.S.C. § 3106. In other words, they sought to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed” under the APA.

To establish a likelihood of success on this claim, they employees were required to convincingly (1) identify records that fall under the FRA; (2) allege that those records are being removed or destroyed in violation of the FRA; and (3) allege that the NASA Administrator and/or Archivist knew about the FRA violations and yet failed to initiate corrective action. The employees failed to make that showing.

Assuming that the first two requirements were satisfied, said the court, they failed to demonstrate that the NASA Administrator and Archivist knew the agency was violating the FRA by sorting the Goddard Library collection in the way it did. The court held that “a predicate to a viable § 3106 failure-to-act claim is a plausible allegation that the applicable agency head or Archivist knows that records are indeed being removed or destroyed in contravention of agency policy or the FRA.” The employees failed to establish that predicate here, the court determined.

Taking database offline. In addition to their claims about the Goddard Library's physical space and the materials once housed within it, the employees alleged that the decision to permanently close the Database was arbitrary and capricious. In tum, their motion for preliminary injunctive relief asked the court to order that NASA not destroy or irreversibly alter the Database while the litigation is ongoing. NASA since provided a declaration that clarifies that the Database was taken offline temporarily and will remain offline. In the meantime, the material on the Database and no material relevant to this litigation have been removed. Because the employees failed to show that the Database's temporary offline status–which preserves the Database material–would cause irreparable harm, the court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction on that claim as well.

The case is No. 26-cv-564 (CRC).

Judge: Cooper, C.

Attorneys: Zachary Weil (Fellowship Law Group) for David Williams, Giovanni De Amici, and Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association [GESTA]. Dimitar Georgiev-Remmel, U.S. Department of Justice, for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Jared Isaacman, and James Byron.

Companies: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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