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Washington, D.C.—The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has set a mid-winter schedule for the filing of legal briefs in the government’s appeal of the successful challenge by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) to new personnel rules in the Department of Homeland Security. Under the court’s schedule, the filing of briefs is to be completed by February 27.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley noted that NTEU “already has won this case twice in federal district court—once last August and again in October” and is looking forward to prevailing again in the court of appeals.

In the first instance, a federal court ruled the regulations illegal and enjoined their implementation; in the second, the same court rejected a motion from DHS to narrow the injunction to permit it to implement the new rules, which would seriously infringe on employee rights in key ways.

Since the initial court decision, Kelley has called on the agency to meet with NTEU for substantive discussions on personnel rules. She repeated that call today, and said that DHS’s failure to grasp the opportunity is “disappointing in the extreme,” particularly in light of the specific statutory mandate—expressed in the Homeland Security Act (HSA), which created DHS—that employees shall have the right to bargain collectively.

DHS has refused to work with NTEU on a system that addresses the perceived needs of the agency while protecting the collective bargaining, due process and appeal rights of employees. Each of these critical areas would be severely weakened if the DHS rules were to take effect.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including some 14,000 in DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).