The Solidarity Docket
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July 15, 2026
This week the wins came through the grievance process and the Rehabilitation Act, as an arbitrator and a federal court each ordered agencies to honor telework and remote work commitments they had discarded. Meanwhile the courts held the line on rulings we reported in recent weeks, and the challenges to the collective bargaining executive orders keep multiplying. Here is what federal workers and their advocates need to know.
Arbitrator Orders Forest Service to Restore Telework and Remote Work
An independent arbitrator has ruled that the U.S. Forest Service violated its Master Agreement with the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) when it unilaterally canceled telework and remote work agreements en masse in April 2025 to implement the administration's return-to-office mandate. The order found the Agency violated both the contract and the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, and it covers nearly 20,000 NFFE-represented employees.
The remedy is substantial. The arbitrator ordered status quo ante relief, meaning the telework and remote work agreements in place before the return-to-office order must be reestablished, and the agency must offer reemployment to workers who left because of the mandate.
The contract permitted cancellation of telework only for performance reasons, changes in eligibility, or a business need. The agency argued that implementing a presidential directive was itself a business need and that it had no duty to bargain over a change it had no choice but to make. The arbitrator rejected that position, reasoning that a presidential memorandum, like an executive order or a change in regulations, does not override the terms of a legally binding collective bargaining agreement. Absent contract language granting the agency unilateral authority to terminate the agreements, the agency was required to honor the contract until the parties addressed the issue in their next round of negotiations.
The timing matters for a workforce already under pressure. NFFE Forest Service Council President Genny Kotyk noted that employees are currently facing directed reassignments under the USDA reorganization we covered last week, and restored telework and remote work agreements will relieve many of them from choosing between relocating across the country and leaving the agency.
One caution: the award may not be the last word. The agency can file exceptions with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and as we have reported, other telework arbitration awards remain in abeyance while related litigation over executive orders proceeds.
Court Orders DOJ to Restore Telework Accommodations for Employees with Disabilities
A disability class action against the Department of Justice we flagged last week has produced its first ruling, and it is a win for the workers. On July 10, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted a preliminary injunction ordering the Executive Office for Immigration Review to immediately restore full-time telework accommodations for the two named plaintiffs while their case proceeds.
Two attorney-advisors at EOIR filed suit in June alleging that the agency's denial of their telework accommodation requests violates Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act. Both had teleworked successfully for years as an accommodation for serious medical conditions, and both allege the agency rescinded those arrangements under its 2025 return-to-office orders. The complaint alleges that EOIR has approved no telework accommodations at all since April 2025, running requests through a process in which denial is preordained. Both plaintiffs say they exhausted hundreds of hours of their own leave rather than risk their health by returning to the office.
The injunction covers the two named plaintiffs for the duration of the merits case. The larger stakes lie ahead: the plaintiffs seek to represent a class of EOIR employees with disabilities who requested and were denied telework accommodations since January 20, 2025.
The ruling lands in the middle of a pattern we have been tracking. Last week we covered NTEU's suit against the IRS, Treasury, and HHS over stalled accommodation requests and reports that the VA has denied and rescinded long-standing telework accommodations for disabled employees. Federal law requires an individualized, interactive process, and this ruling is a judicial signal that blanket refusals to consider telework accommodations will not withstand scrutiny.
Court Refuses to Pause Its Ruling Restoring Regional Director Authority at the FLRA
Last week we reported that the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the FLRA's interim final rulethat had stripped regional directors of their authority to decide representation cases, and we flagged the government's July 6 motions to stay and reconsider that judgment. Those motions have now been resolved, quickly and decisively. On July 8, the court denied both motions and affirmed its June 29 memorandum and order.
The practical effect is that the summary judgment stands. Regional directors, the nonpartisan career officials who have decided representation matters since 1983, continue to hold that authority, and the two-level process that AFGE, NAGE-SEIU, AFSCME, NFFE-IAM, IFPTE, NNOC/NNU, and the other plaintiff groupssued to protect remains in place.
The government's remaining option is an appeal to the First Circuit. None has been filed as of this writing, and we will report on any appeal in the Litigation Tracker.
CFPB Litigation Pauses While the Senate Considers a New Director
The long-running fight over the CFPB's workforce has entered a holding pattern. On July 10, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbiagranted a joint motion by the CFPB and the National Treasury Employees Unionto partially stay proceedings over the Bureau's proposed reduction in force. Rather than press for a ruling on the legality of the RIF plan, the parties agreed the question should await Senate action on the nomination of Brian Johnson to serve as CFPB Director.
Some quick background for readers following along. In June, an en banc D.C. Circuit denied the government's request to modify the stay pending appeal, which means the Bureau still cannot carry out its plan to cut the workforce by roughly two thirds. The appeals court sent the case back to the district court on a limited remand to decide whether the preliminary injunction should be modified in light of the revised RIF plan, and held the en banc appeal in abeyance. A hearing on that question was headed for the fall. The joint stay now pauses the remand proceedings too.
Here is what the stay means in practice. The preliminary injunction protecting the CFPB's workforce remains fully in place, and no mass layoffs can proceed while the stay is in effect. The parties must file a joint status report by January 4, 2027, or within two days of a new director's confirmation, whichever comes first. If Johnson is confirmed, he will decide whether to proceed with the RIF plan, revise it, or abandon it before the litigation resumes.
The practical takeaway for the Bureau's employees is that their jobs are protected for now, and the next move belongs to the Senate and to whoever leads the agency next.
Hydropower Dam Workers Seek an Injunction to Restore Their Bargaining Rights
The list of unions challenging Executive Order 14251 continues to grow, and the newest case comes from the Pacific Northwest. On July 14, the United Power Trades Organization, which represents hundreds of hydropower dam workers employed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The union asks the court to block implementation of the executive order and the termination of its collective bargaining agreement.
The union filed suit after the administration ended its contract pursuant to the March 2025 executive order. Its members operate and maintain the hydropower dams that generate electricity across the Northwest, skilled trades work that has been organized under collective bargaining for decades.
The filing joins a docket that keeps widening while the central question sits with the D.C. Circuit. As we covered last week, Carpenters at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and more than twenty AFGE and NFFE affiliates suing the Department of Defensefiled similar challenges this month.
The D.C. Circuit's opinion in the consolidated cases brought by NTEU, AFSA, and FEA, argued in December, remains the ruling most likely to determine how all of these cases proceed. Seven months after argument, there is still no decision, and district courts across the country continue to stay, park, and calendar cases around its absence.
Other Developments This Week
In the FMCS arbitration consent policy litigation we have been following, the court is showing impatience with the government's pace. On July 14, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied the government's request for an extension of time and ordered it to answer the complaint by noon on July 16. AFGE, IFPTE, NTEU, and NFFE sued in May to block the FMCS policy requiring the affected federal agency to consent before the Service refers a union's request to an arbitration panel.
The compliance fight over Voice of America continues. On July 10, the Widakuswara plaintiffs filed a motion asking the court to compel the government to provide information about its compliance with the vacatur of the March 2025 actions that gutted USAGM's operations, information the government has failed to include in its required monthly status reports. The court vacated those actions in March and has already granted one enforcement motion in May. This is the second time plaintiffs have had to return to the court to obtain compliance information the government was ordered to provide.
Looking Ahead
Several dates on the calendar matter in the coming weeks:
On July 20, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland hears the preliminary injunction motion in the Mullady case, brought by 142 former career employees who allege their RIF terminations were politically motivated.
On July 28, the First Circuit hears oral argument in the appeal of the Fork-in-the-Road deferred resignation case.
The hearing on the government's motion to dismiss in the shutdown RIF case has been continued to August 14, and the reason is worth noting: the parties requested the extension to continue discussing a possible settlement.
The theme of this week's docket is that the tools closest to workers are still working. A negotiated contract, a grievance, and a statute prohibiting disability discrimination each delivered concrete relief this week while the larger structural questions remain unanswered. The largest of those questions still sits with the D.C. Circuit, where the consolidated collective bargaining cases brought by NTEU, AFSA, and FEA were argued seven months ago.
In Solidarity,
Suzanne Summerlin
General Counsel,
Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network
