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WASHINGTON — More than 20 union affiliates representing tens of thousands of civilian employees at the U.S. Department of Defense have filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland against the department and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The complaint, filed on Monday, July 6, 2026, challenges an April 9, 2026 memorandum in which Hegseth directed Department of Defense agencies and components to terminate virtually all active collective bargaining agreements within a 24-hour window, allowing only extremely limited exceptions. The unions say the order immediately stripped tens of thousands of civilian defense workers, many of whom are military veterans and family members, of long-standing contractual protections and benefits. WASHINGTON — The legal challenge was brought by a coalition of local affiliates of the American Federation of Government Employees, the nation’s largest federal employee union, and the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE-IAM). In the lawsuit, the unions argue that Hegseth’s directive violates federal administrative law and constitutes an unlawful attack on the rights of federal workers. They assert that the April memorandum was an attempt to implement Executive Order 14251, which President Donald Trump signed on March 27, 2025, titled "Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs." The executive order seeks to remove collective bargaining rights from more than one million federal employees by invoking national security exemptions under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, a move that has already drawn multiple legal challenges across the federal government.

Prepared by Lauren Mitchell and reviewed by editorial team.