Labor organizations secured early relief in their suit alleging that the US government is ignoring a Biden-era executive order requiring labor agreements for large-scale construction projects, a federal district court said.

The organizations are likely to show that the decision not to mandate the use of project labor agreements for certain construction contracts violates the Administrative Procedure Act, Judge Rudolph Contreras of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said in a May 16 order, granting the organizations a preliminary injunction.

PLAs are pre-hire agreements between project owners like the government and labor unions that set the terms and conditions of employment for specific a project, the court said.

Former US president Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2022 mandating federal agencies to require every contractor doing work on projects estimated to cost more than $35 million to enter into a project labor agreement establishing the terms and working conditions for a specific project with a union.

The plaintiffs are North America’s Building Trades Unions—the construction arm of the AFL-CIO—and its affiliate, Baltimore-D.C. Metro Building and Construction Trades Council. Their April 9 suit said the US Department of Defense and General Services Administration issued memoranda overriding the PLA requirement, which constituted an unlawful revocation of the executive order. The plaintiffs said the agencies have excluded entire classes of construction projects from the scope of the executive order’s mandate.

Contreras granted the plaintiffs relief because the agencies’ “memoranda are not in accordance with the law, as they deviated from the requirements of the EO without providing adequate justification or following the proper exception process.”

The memoranda “effectively nullify the mandatory PLA requirement” the executive order imposed through “blanket class deviations and class exceptions,” the court said. The agencies engaged in a “legal maneuver” the executive order “explicitly foreclosed,” it said.

The government cited the recent PLA dispute before the US Court of Federal Claims, MVL USA Inc. v. United States , whereby the claims court said including PLAs in certain procurements violated contract competition rules. The claims court also found that the dispute became moot after agencies made contract changes, and it lacked authority to grant construction companies an injunction that would bar PLAs.

But the MVL USA holding “was limited to specific procurements before the Court of Federal Claims, and it expressly stated that its conclusions did not apply to unrelated solicitations,” Contreras said. The government can’t rely on that decision “as justification for wholesale noncompliance with the EO,” he said.

Contreras also said the plaintiffs here demonstrated that they would suffer irreparable harm without relief because removing the PLA mandate substantially weakens their bargaining positions in federal construction projects.

Sherman Dunn PC represents the organizations.

The case is N. Am.'s Bldg. Trades Unions v. Dep’t of Def. , D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01070, 5/16/25.