A federal judge overturned a major portion of President Donald Trump’s executive order that weakens government unions, but so far, there is no indication that the president or his administration is willing to obey the ruling.
The Washington Post reported that the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice are “considering options,” but so far, the judge’s ruling is being ignored.
Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled that large portions of Trump’s order to weaken federal employee unions were “invalid” and prohibited the president’s subordinates from implementing the order. Jackson specified that Trump’s order violated the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act and that Congress has ruled that collective bargaining safeguards the public interest.
The story in the newspaper reported that the Social Security Administration is operating under the assumption that Trump’s executive order still stands despite the judge’s ruling. Trump’s order mandated “evicting union officials from agency offices and sharply cutting ‘official time,’ which is used by union representatives, while being paid by the government, to represent all employees in a bargaining unit, not just union members, on such matters as grievances and working conditions,” according to The Washington Post.
Rather than defy a ruling from a federal judge, the typical next step would be for the Justice Department to appeal the judge’s ruling, but a department spokesperson said that is not a certainty.
“We are disappointed in the ruling,” Justice Department spokesperson Andy Reuss said in the newspaper’s story. We “are considering the appropriate next steps to ensure the president is able to fulfill his constitutional duties, run an effective and efficient government, and protect taxpayers from waste and abuse.”
In the story Reuss, nor any other Justice Department official, offered whether it was the president’s constitutional duty to defy the order of a federal judge.
