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Washington, D.C.—In a major victory for First Amendment rights at a time when the federal government is increasingly seeking to restrict such rights under the guise of security, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) will conduct a public rally protesting certain White House actions on the federal sidewalk outside of one of the largest federal buildings in the nation.

Earlier this week NTEU and the Justice Department reached a settlement agreement, after a court hearing on the union’s motion for preliminary injunction. The settlement will allow the union and its Chapter 47, representing some 1,500 Internal Revenue Service employees in New York, to hold a rally on Wednesday, June 22, on a plaza outside the Javits Building at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. The rally will begin at noon.

“In denying NTEU access to the public plaza, the government was making an unconstitutional attempt to turn federal property into a ‘no speech’ zone,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley. “But this union will never silently stand by as the rights of federal employees, indeed all Americans, are trampled upon.”

After hearing testimony and legal arguments this week, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York strongly recommended that the government reach an accommodation with NTEU. The parties did so, allowing NTEU to hold the rally in the requested space and opening the door for other groups to request permits to do so as well.

The complex at 26 Federal Plaza is eclipsed in size among government buildings only by the Pentagon and the Reagan Building in Washington. It houses some 8,000 federal workers from a variety of agencies and gets up to 3,000 visitors each day.

The General Services Administration (GSA) had denied a permit to Chapter 47 to conduct next Wednesday’s rally in the plaza, which runs alongside the municipal sidewalk onto heavily-traveled Broadway. The NTEU chapter is protesting continuing reductions-in-force (RIFs) by the IRS, the agency’s determination to contract more and more federal jobs to the private sector and its decision to close 68 Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs) by the end of this fiscal year. One of the TACs slated to be closed is at 290 Broadway—directly across the street from 26 Federal Plaza.

This marked the second time GSA had denied Chapter 47 a rally permit for the ‘upper plaza.’ It also did so last August, an action which forced the chapter to hold its rally on the adjacent sidewalk and very close to heavy traffic. That gave rise to an NTEU suit over the First Amendment violation. The government’s agreement not to impose a blanket ban on rallies at federal facilities, but to review each permit request on a case-by-case basis, resolved that case as well.

NTEU has a long tradition of fighting for First Amendment rights. In 1976, NTEU won a successful federal appeals court challenge to a law prohibiting federal employees from engaging in informational picketing. In 1992, the union won the right to distribute leaflets on the sidewalks of a federal facility near Baltimore, Md. And in 1995, the union persuaded the Supreme Court to preserve the free speech rights of federal workers by overturning a statutory ban on receipt of honoraria by federal employees for making speeches or writing articles unrelated to their work and on their own time. NTEU also worked to broaden the rights of federal employees to participate in the political process through 1993 legislative reform of the Hatch Act.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including about 94,000 in the IRS.