President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visit Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township, Michigan, April 29, 2025. (Chelsea FitzPatrick/U.S. Air Force)
The union representing Department of Defense Education Activity teachers is suing President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, alleging they unlawfully suspended its rights to due process, free speech and collective bargaining.
The lawsuit — filed Monday by the Federal Education Association in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — challenges a March 27 executive order that the union says illegally stripped it and two affiliated unions of collective bargaining rights.
The order, according to a White House fact sheet, was intended to “ensure that agencies vital to national security can execute their missions without delay and protect the American people.”
The order, which affects thousands of federal workers across 18 agencies and 25 subdivisions, has already been challenged by other federal employee unions. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled on April 25 that key provisions of the order were unlawful, CNN reported that day.
The FEA, its stateside branch, and the Antilles Consolidated Education Association represent more than 5,400 teachers and staff at 161 DODEA schools. More than 64,000 students attend those schools in the United States and on overseas military bases, according to the complaint.
The suit contends the executive order is “wholly unmoored from the narrow authority that Congress granted to the president to exclude federal agencies and agency subdivisions from collective bargaining for reasons of national security.”
The complaint argues that Hegseth failed to use his authority to exempt DODEA — which the union says has no direct national security role — from the order’s mandates.
The suit alleges that DODEA has already begun implementing the order, including eliminating payroll deductions for union dues.
The order violates the separation of powers held by Congress and the executive branch and disregards the Fifth and First Amendments, the suit claims. It further alleges the order’s “real purposes are to retaliate against federal unions for engaging in protected speech and petitioning activities.”
Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, called the order a “brazen, illegal attack” and “an attempt to silence the voices of our nation’s public servants,” according to a March 31 report by Courthouse News Service.
A representative for the FEA could not be reached by phone or email after hours Wednesday at its Washington headquarters.
“DODEA educators provide military-connected families with a world-class education, and they deserve to be respected and honored for their high levels of achievement — not have their rights taken away and their academic freedom trampled upon,” the union’s executive director, Richard Tarr, said in a Wednesday report by Military Times.
