OPM Issues Final Rule to Protect Federal Employees from Schedule F
The Biden Administration released a final rule making it harder to reclassify federal employees and remove their civil service protections.
The goal is to protect civil servants from the threat of Schedule F, the Trump-era executive order that aimed to reclassify certain federal employees as at-will employees, therefore making it easier to remove them from their positions.
“This rule is a step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people,” said President Biden in a statement.
The final rule from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) clarifies and reinforces long-standing protections and merit system principles for career civil servants and it comes as former President Donald Trump hinted at a reinstatement of Schedule F should he return to the White House.
“This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty,” said OPM Director Kiran Ahuja.
OPM received more than 4,000 comments on its proposed rule last fall.
The final rule implements the following:
· States that civil service protections cannot be taken away involuntarily. “Once a career civil servant earns protections, that employee retains them unless waived voluntarily.”
· Prevents an exception designed for non-career, political appointments from being misapplied to civil service positions.
· Establishes procedures for moving positions from the competitive service to the excepted service and within the excepted service. “This change both creates transparency and establishes an appeals process for federal employees when any such movement is involuntary and characterized as stripping employees of their civil service protections. “
The Biden Administration insists it has done what it can, to protect workers from a Schedule F return.
“We are confident that our final rule is the best reading of civil service statutes and is grounded in the civil service in the statutory language, congressional intent, legislative history and decades of applicable case law and practice,” said OPM Deputy Director Rob Shriver on a call with reporters.
Congressional legislation to codify Schedule F protections into law has so far failed to gain traction.
