FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 16, 2026
April 16, 2026
Contact:
AFGE Communications
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Federal Employee Unions File Lawsuit to Block Unlawful FLRA Rule
Coalition of eight unions challenges illegal interim final rule that upends more than four decades of established practice
WASHINGTON — The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), along with seven other national unions representing over a million federal employees, today filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts challenging an unlawful interim final rule issued by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) that changes longstanding FLRA regulations without notice and comment.
The complaint, AFGE et al. v. U.S. Federal Labor Relations Authority, alleges the FLRA’s interim final rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act on multiple grounds: it is arbitrary and capricious, its rushed 30-day effective date is unjustified, and the agency unlawfully bypassed the legally required notice-and-comment process.
Since 1983, the FLRA’s Regional Directors, nonpartisan career professionals, have adjudicated representation petitions, made appropriate unit determinations, approved election agreements, and certified election results. This system was specifically designed to ensure the expeditious processing of representation matters and has functioned effectively for more than four decades.
The FLRA’s new rule transfers all of that authority to the three-member Authority itself, which is composed of political appointees. It also eliminates the two-level review process that has served as a critical check against errors in the representation system. The rule is clearly another unlawful effort of this administration to strip federal employees of rights and to politicize the non-partisan civil service.
“The rule challenged by this lawsuit upends regulations that have existed for over four decades. The FLRA issued this rule without engaging in the legally required notice-and-comment process, instead attempting to minimize the significance of the rule,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley. “Make no mistake, these changes are significant and substantive. They eliminate the non-partisan, non-political decision-making process that currently governs who can and can’t be represented by a union. We should recognize this for what it is — just another step in this administration’s efforts to politicize federal employment and make it easier to retaliate against those, including unions, that speak out against them.”
The plaintiffs in the case are AFGE, the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE/SEIU), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE-IAM), the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees (IFPTE), the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the AFL-CIO. The unions are represented by Bredhoff & Kaiser, PLLC.
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