Court Opinion

ID: 9455728
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:31:33.446186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:42.761560
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I concur. It appears to me the United States is in no tenable position to assert *1025that the action of the district court violated the doctrine of separation of powers. The government chose to invoke the judicial power as an aid to executive function, seeking and obtaining a temporary restraining order later merged, by agreement, into a preliminary injunction on representation of employee action amounting to an illegal strike. The United States still persists in seeking a judicial determination in this action that the employee action was illegal and asks for a permanent injunction based on such contention of illegality. The contention has been consistently opposed both in law and fact by the subject employees and the ultimate issue is unresolved and pending. And yet, when the mandate of the judicial power was used effectively to bring the employees back to work, the agency promptly applied stringent administrative discipline to the subject employees premised on an agency executive determination of the very issue that the court now has before it. To me, such action can only amount to an attempt to turn the judiciary on and off like a light globe to suit the whims of the agency. The trial court had every jurisdictional and discretionary right to protect the integrity of the judicial issue and its order.
I agree with my Brother Breitenstein that practicality may indicate that the administrative process may now best serve to determine both the individual rights of the involved employees and also the initial determination of whether an illegal strike did occur. But if this be so, the government should seek to have the preliminary injunction dissolved as having served its purpose and should withdraw its petition for a permanent injunction.