One of the country's largest public sector labor unions is asking the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals to halt a series of executive orders from President Donald Trump, now in effect, that it says are aimed at curbing the power of labor unions in the federal government.

The Service Employees International Union is seeking to have the Second Circuit reverse a recently issued decision that gave the go-ahead for the executive orders to continue in force.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford of the Western District of New York rejected the union's motion for a preliminary injunction against the executive orders, writing that its lawsuit against them wasn't likely to succeed in the long term.

"Plaintiffs' additional submissions and arguments have not changed the Court's assessment of Plaintiffs' likelihood of prevailing on their procedural APA claims," Wolford wrote. "The Court continues to find that Plaintiffs are not likely to succeed on such claims."

Wolford also appeared, in her decision, to write that Trump had lawfully promulgated the executive orders last year, contrary to concerns from government labor unions that he was illegally infringing on their rights.

"This is not an impermissible exercise of legislative power, but a function of the President's role as head of the executive branch and his associated broad statutory authority to regulate executive branch employment policies," Wolford wrote.

The executive orders, signed last year, would make it easier for underperforming federal employees to be fired. They would also direct federal agencies to renegotiate labor contracts with unions, including SEIU, and limit how much time workers can use for union business.

Wolford had previously denied a temporary restraining order sought by the union against Trump's executive orders in October. In that decision, she'd written it was unlikely that unions would be immediately harmed by the orders going into effect.

Wolford had predicted a slow implementation of the orders. But SEIU, in a letter to the court in November, said the federal government was already taking steps to enforce them. Officials from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had indicated as much in a letter, they said.

Because she rejected the preliminary injunction on other grounds, Wolford said in last week's decision she didn't need to evaluate the potential harm that could come to the union.

SEIU Local 200 United president Scott Phillipson criticized the executive orders in a statement  confirming the union's appeal of Wolford's decision.

"Attacking us only serves to silence the voices of doctors, nurses, police officers, buildings and other grounds workers, and others who are with patients every day and best positioned to stand up for what they need," Phillipson said. We will never stop fighting against these types of misguided attempts to weaken our union and harm our patients."

SEIU is represented in the litigation by attorneys with law firm Altshuler Berzon in San Francisco, Creighton Johnsen & Giroux in Buffalo and Mairead Connor, a solo practitioner in Syracuse.

The Second Circuit would become the second federal appellate court in the country to review the executive orders at issue after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit allowed them to take effect in early October.

That case was brought against the Trump administration by another prominent labor union: the AFL-CIO.

Their lawsuit was tossed by a federal judge, who said the labor union's concerns were outside the court's purview and should instead be brought to the Federal Labor Relations Authority, a federal, bipartisan entity that reviews such claims.

Wolford, in her decision from October denying SEIU's request for a temporary restraining order, had come to the same conclusion. Her position remained the same in her decision last week denying the preliminary injunction.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, a target of SEIU's lawsuit, declined to comment on the appeal.

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