POPA files lawsuit at District Court against Trump’s order barring PTO employees from joining a union

POPA files lawsuit at District Court against Trump’s order barring PTO employees from joining a union

Titled, ‘Further Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program, it was to enhance national security

The Patent Office Professionals Association (POPA) has joined the National Weather Service Employees Organization to file a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, against President Donald Trump, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Acting Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Laura Grimm, and Acting U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Coke Morgan Stewart, to restore the collective voice of the public servants they represent.

The union, POPA, has represented patent examiners and other professionals at the USPTO since 1964. The complaint was regarding a pre-Labor Day Executive Order (EO) that barred USPTO employees from joining the union.

Trump’s order titled “Further Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program,” is aimed at enhancing national security. It excluded employees in the patents unit and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) of the USPTO from joining POPA or the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 243, which represents certain USPTO non-professional employees.

The union accused Trump of favoring unions that endorsed him in past elections while targeting those that publicly opposed “his efforts to neuter the civil service.”

POPA emphasised several actions it took against the administration, including several grievances it filed with the Federal Labor Relations Authority. While one of those is under investigation, five were denied but are pending arbitration, and one was denied and is not pending further review.

The lawsuit added that the fact sheet accompanying Trump’s lates EO contained ‘spurious reasons’ why the patents department has been included in exemptions from the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS). This was essentially regarding its assertion that “the agencies and their subdivisions set forth in Section 2 of the order are determined to have as a primary function, intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”

The complaint read: “The USPTO does not assess whether the release of patent applications could harm national security,” and the EO was retaliatory.

Furthermore, the unions explained, “The fact that the POPA and NWSEO bargaining units were not included among the first tranche of exemptions in the March Executive Order but were excluded after they engaged in robust opposition to the defendants’ policies, evinces that national security concerns were not the motivation for their exclusion. The defendant, Trump, made a threat in the fact sheet which accompanied Executive Order 14251 that he ‘will not tolerate mass obstruction’ that was carried out only after it was not heeded by the plaintiffs.”

The plaintiffs asserted three causes of action: violation of the FSLMR Statue; violation of the unions’ First Amendment rights; and violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

Regarding the First Amendment allegations, the complaint claimed that Trump’s actions constituted viewpoint discrimination by excluding labor organizations that supported him. The Fact Sheet accompanying the EO, not applicable to POPA, indicated that “President Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him.”

The recent EO does apply to POPA, which has requested the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin Lutnick and Stewart from failing “to recognize POPA as the exclusive representative of the professional employees of the Office of the Commissioner of Patents and of the employees of the USPTO’s Office of Chief Information Officer, and ordering the defendants Lutnick and Stewart, their successors and their agents and subordinates, to restore POPA’s collective bargaining agreements and relationship with the USPTO and to honor the agreements’ provisions.”