Judge Halts Trump Administration’s Latest Effort to Strip TSA Workers of Collective Bargaining Rights
Airport screeners with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 2617 are hailing a recent court order to reverse the Trump administration’s latest attempt to strip them of their collective bargaining rights. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead halted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s unilateral attempt to terminate the collective bargaining agreement between AFGE and the Transportation Security Administration covering 47,000 TSA officers. In his order, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead ruled that the Trump administration “plainly” violated a 2025 court injunction.
“On behalf of our 140 members protecting the safety of air travelers throughout Maine, I would like to thank Judge Whitehead for halting these attacks on our basic rights,” said Bill Reiley, Regional Vice President of AFGE Local 2617 and an airport screener at the Portland Jetport. “TSA officers are dedicated public servants who took an oath to protect the safety of the traveling public and prevent another 911 from happening again. Many of us are veterans and we take our service to our country very seriously. Ripping up our legally negotiated contract and taking away our basic rights to negotiate over our wages and working conditions will not make the skies safer.”
Reilly noted that the attempt to destroy the TSA union is part of an effort to pave the way to privatize the Transportation Security Administration as it is outlined in Chapter 5 of the infamous Project 2025, a blueprint for Trump's administration. Chapter 5 of Project 2025 states that “[u]ntil it is privatized, TSA should be treated as a national security provider, and its workforce should be deunionized immediately.”
When the TSA was created in 2001, TSOs were denied Title 5 rights, which guarantees bargaining rights and rights on the job for other federal employees. They were granted limited collective bargaining rights in 2011 under President Barack Obama. In 2022, the Biden administration expanded those rights and issued an improved pay scale. In March 2025, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued a new determination to repeal TSA workers’ collective bargaining rights. But in June, U.S. District Court judge blocked that effort, determining it was meant to “punish AFGE and its members because AFGE has chosen to push back against the Trump administration’s attacks to federal employment in the courts.”
Less than 24 hours after the U.S. House of Representatives took bipartisan action in December to restore collective bargaining rights to more than one million federal workers, Noem announced she was terminating collective bargaining rights for TSA workers. In his order, Judge Whitehead took Noem to task for trying to make an end-run around a court injunction.
“The question before the court is straightforward: does defendants’ planned implementation of the September Noem determination violate the existing preliminary injunction?” Whitehead wrote. “The answer is plainly yes.”