Donald Trump has suffered yet another major legal defeat. This time, a federal judge in Rhode Island has ordered his administration to restore a union contract covering more than 300,000 Veterans Affairs Department workers. It is a loss that carries real weight, and another judge has made it crystal clear that the administration’s shameful treatment of federal workers will not go unchallenged.
The trouble started last August, when V.A. Secretary Doug Collins moved to nullify the collective bargaining agreement. That attack on workers was part of Trump’s broader push to fire thousands of U.S. government employees. The termination swept away protections that workers and their union had spent years fighting to secure.
U.S. District Judge Melissa R. DuBose did not mince words in her 29-page opinion. She wrote that the union, the American Federation of Government Employees’ National Veterans Affairs Council, had clearly shown the contract termination was an act of retaliation. She found that act to be a direct violation of the First Amendment.
“The termination of the contract,” she wrote, “seems substantially motivated by the plaintiffs’ history and frequency of vocally opposing changes to labor policies.”
Judge DuBose made a compelling case for restoring the contract before the full lawsuit even wraps up. She pointed out that the union was already losing members at a fast pace after the agreement was killed. She reasoned that waiting years for a final legal decision would cause serious, lasting harm to workers who cannot afford to wait.
She ordered the three-year contract, originally ratified in June 2023, to be reinstated for the full remainder of its term. The ruling covers all related amendments, local agreements, and memoranda of understanding that were in place at the time of termination. Workers now have their protections back, at least while the case continues.
One of the most powerful parts of the ruling was how Judge DuBose used Trump’s own words against him. She cited a White House fact sheet tied to an executive order Trump signed in March, which stated that “certain federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.” That kind of language made it very hard for the administration to argue the termination was motivated by anything other than political payback.
She also pointed to several anti-union statements made by Secretary Collins himself. His words, she said, showed that the agency’s leadership had a “laser focus” on the ways it saw employee unions as getting in the way of the V.A.’s goals. That is not a national security argument. That is a political grudge dressed up as policy.
DuBose also noted that Collins had selectively exempted some unions from the rollback while targeting others. That inconsistency mattered. It meant that V.A. workers doing similar jobs ended up with completely different rights depending solely on which union they belonged to. The judge called this out directly and found it legally indefensible.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley did not hold back in responding to the ruling. He said the V.A. had “singled out AFGE and our members for retaliation because we refused to stay silent.” He added that Collins’ decision to exempt other unions while killing AFGE’s contract made the retaliation “impossible to deny.”
National V.A. Council President Mary Jean Burke was equally direct in her statement. She said the ruling overcame the Trump administration’s “shameful and hostile attempts to silence V.A. workers.” She closed with four simple words that said everything: “We are still here.”
This ruling is not the final word. The V.A. is widely expected to appeal, and a federal appeals court recently sided with the Trump administration in a similar case involving other unions. The legal road ahead is long and uncertain.
But for now, more than 300,000 federal workers have their contract back. And another judge has put the Trump administration on notice that using the power of government to crush workers for speaking up is not something courts are going to quietly let pass.
