When you hear “Trump administration Department of Homeland Security” and “due process,” you might think of the government’s legal violations in the immigration context. Branching out into a different context, a new ruling found a move by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem likely violated due process in her bid to crush collective bargaining at the Transportation Security Administration.
Noem had issued a “determination” intended to bar transportation security officers from engaging in collective bargaining. Along with a local union and two aviation-related unions, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed a federal lawsuit in Washington state. The plaintiffs argued that the Noem Determination was retaliatory in violation of the First Amendment, violated due process under the Fifth Amendment, and was arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Siding with the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle granted a preliminary injunction against the Noem Determination and its rescission of a 2024 bargaining agreement. “The Court here finds that an injunction must issue to preserve the rights and benefits that the 2024 CBA confers to TSOs pending resolution of this litigation,” the Clinton appointee wrote Monday, referring to transportation security officers.
“AFGE has shown the Noem Determination likely violates Due Process, having afforded no notice or process for AFGE and its members to work with DHS and TSA to resolve any disagreement before simply shredding the contractual promises of the CBA,” Pechman wrote.
She added that the determination “appears to have been undertaken to punish AFGE and its members because AFGE has chosen to push back against the Trump Administration’s attacks to federal employment in the courts.” So with the caveat that this is a preliminary victory for the plaintiffs in what could be lengthy litigation, it’s the latest example of the administration facing a skeptical bench because of its punitive approach. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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