by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 10:30 AM ET, Fri January 16, 2026
In a new win for Transportation Security Administration employees, a federal judge has blocked the Trump Administration’s second attempt at ending a collective bargaining agreement with a union representing nearly 50,000 TSA workers this week.
The ruling was handed out by U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead on Thursday, January 15, according to Courthouse News Service.
“The question before the court is straightforward: Does defendants’ planned implementation of the September Noem determination violate the existing preliminary injunction? The answer is plainly yes,” U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead.
The legal battle began in March 2025, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the end of the collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents around 47,000 TSA officers, among some 820,000 other government employees.
The collective bargaining agreement was signed in May, 2024 and is set to run through 2031, offering workplace protections, grievance procedures and union representation.
According to Courthouse News Service, TSA officers “historically receive lower pay and fewer protections than other federal employees.”
The AFGE sued the Department of Homeland Security and TSA. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman issued the government a preliminary injunction in June, blocking the government’s attempt to end the labor agreement, which violated the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Yet despite this, the TSA informed the union that Noem signed a new memorandum back in September, terminating the collective bargaining agreement. The agency didn’t tell TSA officers about the second memorandum until December. TSA officers worked for over a month without pay in October in what was the nation's longest government shutdown.
Whitehead took over the case in October, leading to the decision this week, in which he wrote: “Unless and until the injunction is modified, dissolved or stayed, defendants [the government] must make every effort to comply with its terms or risk the possibility of civil contempt.”
“On behalf of the 47,000 TSA officers our union represents, I thank the court for stepping in to prevent the administration from ripping up their union contract, again,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley. “TSA officers — many of whom are veterans — are patriotic public servants who swore an oath to protect the safety of the traveling public and to ensure that another horrific attack like September 11 never happens again. The administration’s repeated efforts to strip these workers of a voice in their working conditions should concern every person who steps foot in an airport.”
In the original statement ending collective bargaining, the DHS said it was returning TSA to “merit-based performance recognition and advancement,” and that the union’s agreement didn’t actually benefit TSA officers.
The executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, Norm Eisen, also praised the ruling: “It shouldn’t have been necessary to go to court once — much less twice — to stop the Trump administration’s illegitimate attack on the collective bargaining agreement between AFGE and TSA,” he wrote in a statement. “It was plainly illegal the first time and even more so the second."
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