{"id":276,"date":"2026-06-16T20:14:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=276"},"modified":"2026-06-16T20:14:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:14:04","slug":"nteu-sues-irs-over-destruction-of-employees-pro-union-decorations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=276","title":{"rendered":"NTEU sues IRS over destruction of employees\u2019 pro-union decorations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The National Treasury Employees Union on Monday sued the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that the agency has begun confiscating and disposing of pro-NTEU flyers and other decorations from employees\u2019 communal and personal workspaces in violation of their First Amendment rights.<\/p>

Read more Federal agencies are getting more attention on social media \u2014 and more criticism<\/a><\/p>

The , filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., documents multiple occasions in which IRS Facilities Management and Security Services personnel stole NTEU paraphernalia from workers\u2019 cubicles, and it reports widespread efforts to literally paper over communal bulletin boards where the union\u2019s flyers are often posted.<\/p>

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\u201cThe two FMSS employees walked from cubicle to cubicle to relay this message to even those employees who were not displaying NTEU materials at all to deter them from putting up such materials in the future,\u201d the lawsuit states, describing an incident at an IRS office in Decatur, Ga. \u201cAnd both FMSS employees came to [local NTEU chapter President Lakisha] Murphy\u2019s cubicle to instruct her to remove her NTEU materials; otherwise, they said, they would remove those materials at the end of the workday. That is what happened: FMSS removed NTEU flags from three cubicles and disposed of them in the men\u2019s restroom. One flag was returned upon Ms. Murphy\u2019s request, but the others could not be retrieved from the restroom waste.\u201d<\/p>

The incidents stem from a May 29 directive from IRS\u2019 acting chief of FMSS John Pekarik instructing employees to remove \u201cany and all NTEU materials\u201d in IRS facilities using \u201cwhatever steps are necessary,\u201d short of vandalism of non-union property to reach the offending decoration. The email suggested the initiative was aimed at complying with President Trump\u2019s 2025 executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce, including IRS employees, of their collective bargaining rights on national security grounds.<\/p>

\u201cIRS leadership has identified instances of NTEU flyers, posters and other paraphernalia remaining in place at IRS posts of duty,\u201d the email stated. \u201cGiven the high-profile nature of these materials as they relate to the president\u2019s executive order, and given IRS senior leadership\u2019s prior directive to ensure all of these materials have been removed, I\u2019ve been asked to ensure that recurring instances of NTEU materials in the workplace be addressed immediately.\u201d<\/p>

Neither Trump\u2019s union executive orders nor the Office of Personnel Management\u2019s make mention of scrubbing workspaces of references to the union or barring employees from displaying their support for the labor groups.<\/p>

Read more Can a championship run teach us something about government?<\/a><\/p>

NTEU says the forward-looking prohibition on employees posting NTEU-related materials in the workplace is a classic example of prior restraint, a form of government censorship that federal courts find unconstitutional in most cases.<\/p>

\u201cIn cases involving a broad ban on group speech, \u2018the government must show that the interests of both potential audiences and a vast group of present and future employees in a broad range of present and future expression are outweighed by that expressions\u2019 necessary impact on the actual operation of the government,\u201d the union wrote. \u201cThis is an exacting standard. Here, NTEU materials remaining in common space and employee workstations at IRS facilities have no \u2018impact on the actual operations of the government.\u2019 Indeed, those types of signs and posters have been in IRS workplaces for decades.\u201d<\/p>

The lawsuit accuses IRS of what NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald called \u201ctextbook\u201d viewpoint discrimination against union supporters at the agency, as well as violations of the First Amendment\u2019s freedom of association.<\/p>

\u201cNTEU will not stand for the administration\u2019s effort to retaliate against us for our advocacy and to try to erase NTEU from the workplace,\u201d she said. \u201cNTEU has represented IRS employees for nearly a century. It will continue to fight for their right to speak up and support the union.\u201d<\/p>

Read more Sen. Warner probes whether cyber agency workforce cuts weakened state support<\/a><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Internal Revenue Service last month issued a directive barring employees from posting flyers and other decorations related to the National Treasury Employees Union, which the union says violates the First Amendment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-workforce"],"yoast_head":"\nNTEU sues IRS over destruction of employees\u2019 pro-union decorations - Market Relocation Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=276\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NTEU sues IRS over destruction of employees\u2019 pro-union decorations - 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