Trump administration paves way for easier termination of public employees News
Trump administration paves way for easier termination of public employees

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Thursday announced drastic changes to the way federal employees are classified, making it easier for the president to fire public employees.

The rule adds a new “excepted service” category, Schedule Policy/Career, which includes “career positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” Such positions might include positions like senior policy analysts, regulatory affairs specialists, and legislative liaisons, but at the end of the day, Trump has the ultimate call on the reclassification.

Employees in this category will be treated differently from competitive civil service employees. Specifically, employees transferred into the Schedule Policy/Career category will be stripped of adverse action procedures or appeal rights that are typical in disciplinary actions and terminations. According to the rule, this change is necessary because “[m]oving policy-influencing positions into Schedule Policy/Career will remove procedural impediments to holding career officials accountable for their performance and conduct, while retaining their status as career employees appointed based on merit.”

In other words, the executive branch will more easily be able to fire employees classified as “Schedule Policy/Career” for reasons that otherwise would have required certain procedural and appellate rights.

Moreover, the regulation now requires designated Schedule Policy/Career positions to require agencies “to establish and enforce internal policies protecting these career employees from, for example, whistleblower reprisal.” These channels and protections are no longer a given.

Pursuant to the standard notice and comment rulemaking process, the OPM received 40,500 comments during the 45-day public comment period from a variety of individuals. About 94 percent of comments opposed the proposed regulation.

OPM Director Scott Kupor told reporters on Thursday that federal agency heads have provided the OPM with a list of approximately 50,000 positions suggested for reclassification—about two percent of the entire federal workforce. He also pushed back against critics who argued that Trump would manipulate this rule to fill certain positions with his loyalists: “People are free to agree or disagree with obviously any of the priorities that any president has, this president or future presidents.” He continued that “if their disagreement leads them to then try to actively thwart or undermine the execution of those priorities,” then employees in the reclassified policy-related positions could face termination or other discipline.

President Trump has a track record of similar polices aimed at federal employees, unions, and agencies. This rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register today.

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