type: timeline_event
On March 13, 2026, federal Judge Melissa DuBose granted the American Federation of Government Employees a preliminary injunction ordering the Department of Veterans Affairs to reinstate its master collective bargaining agreement. The ruling restored union protections for more than 300,000 VA employees whose bargaining rights had been stripped by VA Secretary Doug Collins under a Trump administration executive order issued in March 2025.
The March 2025 executive order had designated VA employees as essential to national security, a classification that the administration argued exempted them from collective bargaining requirements under federal labor law. Collins moved swiftly to terminate the existing master agreement, eliminating protections governing working conditions, grievance procedures, and disciplinary processes for the largest civilian workforce in the federal government.
Judge DuBose found that Collins had violated both the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. The court determined that the national security rationale was pretextual — the VA's mission of providing healthcare and benefits to veterans bore no meaningful relationship to the national security justification invoked to strip bargaining rights. The judge noted that the same workforce had operated under collective bargaining for decades without any demonstrated harm to national security.
The ruling represented one of the most significant judicial pushbacks against the administration's campaign to weaken federal employee unions. AFGE National President Everett Kelley called the decision "a victory for every veteran who depends on a stable, experienced VA workforce." Senate Veterans Committee leaders warned that the administration's effort to eliminate bargaining rights was destabilizing VA hospitals and clinics at a time when the system was already strained by workforce reductions driven by DOGE.