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SAN FRANCISCO – Four unions representing U.S. Department of Agriculture employees, joined by nonprofit organizations and cities and counties from across the country, filed a new lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to stop the Trump administration from implementing an unlawful reorganization of the department.
The complaint names USDA and Secretary Brooke Rollins as defendants, and an accompanying renewed motion for a preliminary injunction asks the court to halt imminent forced relocations of employees that are part of a reorganization, a reorganization the agency has proceeded with despite Congress expressly prohibiting such action absent congressional approval. USDA has already begun forcing employees to choose between forced relocation or the loss of their jobs.
The union plaintiffs are the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO (AFGE); the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO (AFSCME); the National Federation of Federal Employees, IAM, AFL-CIO (NFFE); and the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). Together, the four unions speak for USDA employees in nearly every corner of the department this reorganization touches.
The full coalition also includes the County of Santa Clara, California; the City and County of San Francisco, California; Prince George’s County, Maryland; the Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies; the American Geophysical Union; the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks; NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council); and Western Watersheds Project.
The coalition filed this separate lawsuit pursuant to an order Judge Susan Illston issued last week in AFGE v. Trump, the coalition’s broader challenge to the administration’s unlawful reshaping of the federal government. The coalition prepared and filed this lawsuit and renewed request for preliminary relief just days after Judge Illston held in AFGE v. Trump that these claims merited their own case.
American Federation of Government Employees news release
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