About 50,000 career federal employees will find it easier to be fired and lose their ability to appeal disciplinary actions with the Trump administration’s latest move.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a final rule on Thursday on “Schedule Policy/Career,” allowing the administration to reclassify federal employees as at-will and not provide the same job protections as other positions.
According to the Federal News Network (FNN), reclassified employees will lose long-standing job protections. They will be unable to appeal adverse actions
against them—including firings, demotions, or suspensions—to the Merit Systems Board. The OPM said federal employees will also be unable to challenge their reclassifications.It’s unclear which positions will be impacted. Still, Trump administration officials said the creation of Schedule Policy/Career aims to improve employee accountability and address “performance management challenges” in the federal workforce.
“It will give agencies the practical ability to separate employees who insert partisanship into their official duties, engage in corruption, or otherwise fail to uphold merit principles,” OPM wrote in the final rule.
According to CNN, this rule change will impact about 2% of the federal workforce.
Democratic lawmakers have vowed to push back against the administration’s efforts to overhaul the federal workforce. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is the co-sponsor of the Saving the Civil Service Act. The bill seeks to secure federal job protections permanently.
“They want to convert these positions that right now are based on your qualifications for the job, what you know, your experience, into positions where they can appoint political hacks to do the job.”
Van Hollen continued, “[This] directly undermines the whole idea behind the merit-based civil service. We will fight that.”
The rule changes come after Trump called for changes to the policy previously known as Schedule F. According to FNN, OPM’s final rule rescinds the Biden administration’s 2024 regulations aimed at preventing the resurgence of Schedule F.
The Biden administration’s regulation
clarified that “policy-influencing” roles are exclusively political roles and do not apply to career federal employees. Removing that 2024 rule clears a path for agencies to reclassify their employees.RELATED CONTENT: Steve Bannon Delivers Keynote Address at Black Entrepreneurs’ Conference