AFSCME and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed a lawsuit today against the Trump administration, challenging its efforts to politicize the civil service through illegal executive orders.
The lawsuit asserts that President Donald Trump illegally exceeded his authority in trying to unilaterally roll back a regulation that protects the rights of civil servants. Trump is trying to make it easier to fire career civil servants in order to appoint loyalists to do his bidding.
AFSCME President Lee Saunders called the Trump administration’s attacks against federal employees “a shameless attempt to politicize the federal workforce by replacing thousands of dedicated, qualified civil servants with political cronies.”
He recalled that our union “was born in the fight for a professional, non-partisan civil service, and our communities will pay the price if these anti-union extremists are allowed to undo decades of progress by stripping these workers of their freedoms. Together, we are fighting back.”
Everett Kelley, the national president of AFGE, said the lawsuit is intended to “protect the integrity of the American people’s government.”
“Together, we can stop the efforts to fire hundreds of thousands of experienced, hard-working Americans who have dedicated their careers to serving their country and prevent these career civil servants from being replaced with unqualified political flunkies loyal to the president, but not the law or Constitution,” Kelley also said.
Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said that since taking office just nine days ago, the Trump administration “has repeatedly demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law in service of its political objectives.”
"Its efforts to politicize the non-partisan, independent federal employees who protect our national and domestic security, ensure our food and medications are safe, deliver essential services to people and communities everywhere, and much more is simply and clearly illegal,” Perryman added.