The Solidarity Docket
Week of March 19, 2026
This week brings several significant court rulings, a new discrimination lawsuit, and continued fallout from the administration's campaign to dismantle collective bargaining rights across the federal workforce. The DHS partial shutdown enters its sixth week with no resolution in sight.
Court Orders Reinstatement of USAGM Journalists and Staff
On March 17, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted partial summary judgment to plaintiffs in Abramowitz v. Lake, holding that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it issued a March 2025 internal memorandum drastically curtailing USAGM's operations, placed employees on administrative leave, terminated contractors, and ceased broadcasting. The court vacated those actions as arbitrary and capricious and as unlawfully withheld agency action, and ordered affected journalists and staff reinstated by March 23, 2026.
This ruling follows last week's decision in the related case Widakuswara v. Lake, in which Judge Lamberth held that Kari Lake's service as acting CEO violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the Appointments Clause. Together the two rulings constitute a comprehensive judicial rejection of the administration's effort to dismantle USAGM. The Widakuswara ruling voided the layoffs on constitutional grounds; Abramowitz voids the broader operational shutdown on statutory grounds. Contractors seeking reinstatement were directed to pursue their claims in the Court of Federal Claims.
Court Orders VA to Reinstate Master Collective Bargaining Agreement
On March 13, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose of the District of Rhode Island granted AFGE's motion for a preliminary injunction in AFGE v. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, ordering the VA to reinstate the Master CBA it terminated in August 2025, along with all amendments, local supplemental agreements, and memoranda of understanding subsidiary to it, for the remainder of the agreement's original term.
The ruling covers AFGE's National Veterans Affairs Council, which represents more than 300,000 VA employees. Judge DuBose found that AFGE is likely to succeed on its First Amendment retaliation claim, and the court's reasoning turns on a fact the VA cannot easily explain away: when Secretary Doug Collins terminated union contracts in August 2025, he terminated AFGE's contract but left the contracts of other VA unions in place. The court found that VA workers in similar jobs now have different rights depending on which union they belong to. That selective CBA termination, the court held, was neither reasonable nor reasonably explained, and appears substantially motivated by AFGE's history of vocally opposing changes to VA labor policies and filing lawsuits challenging the administration.
Notably, the court did not reach the broader question of whether the national security executive orders themselves are lawful, that question remains pending in the D.C. Circuit. Judge DuBose held that AFGE did not need to wait for that litigation to challenge the VA Secretary's specific, discrete decision to terminate its contract.
The ruling applies only to the AFGE/NVAC Master CBA. The VA also terminated CBAs with NAGE, NFFE, NNOC/NNU, and SEIU in the same August 2025 action. A parallel lawsuit by a coalition of nursing unions, United Nurses Association of California v. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed a preliminary injunction motion in January 2026 and is still awaiting a ruling. Whether those unions will receive similar relief, and whether the selective termination reasoning extends to their circumstances, remains to be seen.
The VA is expected to appeal the AFGE ruling. The Ninth Circuit vacated a similar preliminary injunction last month in AFGE v. Trump (N.D. Cal.), finding that the administration's EO-based CBA terminations were not retaliatory.
Fired MSPB Member Asks Supreme Court to Recognize Distinct Constitutional Protection for Adjudicative Bodies
Attorneys for Cathy Harris, the Democratic Merit Systems Protection Board member fired by President Trump in February 2025, filed a petition for Supreme Court review this week, arguing that her case raises a constitutional question that Trump v. Slaughter, the pending case on Humphrey's Executor, does not and cannot resolve.
The petition's core argument is straightforward: the MSPB is a purely adjudicative body, not a policymaking agency. It does not promulgate substantive rules, initiate investigations, or prosecute cases. It passively waits for cases to be brought before it, applies law to facts, and issues decisions subject to Article III review. That makes it constitutionally distinct from the FTC, the NLRB, and the CFPB - the agencies at the center of the recent removal-power cases. The relevant precedent, Harris argues, is not Humphrey's Executor alone but Wiener v. United States(1958), in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Constitution does not permit the President to remove members of a purely adjudicative body simply to install his own appointees. That holding rests on a constitutional tradition of legislative courts dating to the founding.
The D.C. Circuit ruled against Harris in December, finding that the MSPB wields substantial executive power and that its members must therefore be removable at will. The petition argues the majority was wrong on the facts, the government itself conceded before the district court that the MSPB does not make policy, initiate cases, or enforce its own orders.
The stakes extend well beyond the MSPB. The petition warns that the D.C. Circuit's reasoning, if left standing, threatens the independence of every Article I court, including the U.S. Tax Court and the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
The MSPB is the primary forum for federal workers challenging adverse employment actions, discrimination, and whistleblower retaliation. In September 2025, the Office of Legal Counsel issued a directive telling the MSPB how to rule in cases challenging mass terminations of federal employees, a directive the petition calls an astonishing assault on the Board's adjudicative independence. If the President can remove MSPB members at will, the Board cannot function as the impartial forum Congress created it to be. The Supreme Court has not yet acted on the petition.
New Lawsuit Alleges USAID RIF Violated the ADEA
On March 18, a group of former Foreign Service Officers filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Bradley v. United States Agency for International Development, alleging that USAID, DOGE, OPM, and OMB violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in carrying out the RIF at USAID. The complaint alleges that the RIF disproportionately targeted older workers in violation of the ADEA's protections for employees 40 and older.
This appears to be the first lawsuit in the current federal workforce litigation wave to assert ADEA claims arising from the administration's mass workforce reductions. The theory, that the RIF had a discriminatory disparate impact on older workers, represents a distinct legal avenue from the APA, separation of powers, and First Amendment claims that have dominated the litigation to date.
DHS Shutdown Entering Sixth Week; Workers Still Without Pay
The partial government shutdown drags into a sixth week with DHS employees either working without pay or furloughed.
As of this week, the White House released a written proposal outlining five areas where the administration says it is willing to make policy concessions. Members of Congress have said the offer does not go far enough, and no meeting between the President and Senate Democratic leadership is currently scheduled. The two sides remain at a stalemate, and there is no clear timeline for resolution.
For DHS workers in financial distress, the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund provides emergency loans and grants to federal workers in exactly this situation.
Schedule P-C and the First Amendment: Rise Up Training Now Available
Schedule Policy/Career reclassifications are expected to start any day now. The due process concerns surrounding Schedule P-C go beyond compensation, reclassification also has significant implications for federal employees' First Amendment rights.
Rise Up volunteer attorney Joshua Stanton, a former federal attorney with nearly three decades of experience, led a training this week on First Amendment rights for federal employees and how Schedule P-C reclassification affects them. The training is now available for workers, advocates, and volunteer attorneys who want to understand how reclassification interacts with speech protections for policy-oriented federal employees. Passcode: ?^An=4V8
Other Litigation Developments
In AFGE v. OPM, AFGE filed its answering brief on March 13 in the Ninth Circuit appeal of the district court's September 2025 permanent injunction finding that OPM lacked authority to direct agencies to terminate probationary employees.
In AFGE v. Kupor, no ruling has yet issued on AFGE's motion for a preliminary injunction challenging OPM's Merit Hiring Plan “Loyalty Question.” The court held a hearing on March 11. A decision could come at any time.
In Solidarity,
Suzanne Summerlin
General Counsel Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network
