Government Accountability Project. v. United States Office of Personnel Management

Protect Democracy and Selendy Gay PLLC are challenging the Trump Administration’s attempt to dismantle a cornerstone of American democracy: a federal civil service rooted in merit and integrity.

President Trump’s Executive Order 14171 — misleadingly titled “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Government” and which the President issued on January 20, 2025 — would make it even easier to gut the civil service and replace it with partisans. The EO directs the creation of a new “Schedule Policy/Career” (Schedule P/C, formerly known as Schedule F) classification of federal workers in order to strip them of congressionally established protections from political retribution. 

This scheme harms both federal employees and the public they serve by depriving Americans of a workforce with the expertise to deliver essential goods and services.

Plaintiffs

The plaintiffs, Government Accountability Project and the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), are asking a federal court to require the Trump Administration to follow the law and to find that the executive branch cannot simply ignore Congress’s duly-passed laws to convert the meritocratic civil service into a spoils system for political supporters. 

The Government Accountability Project was founded in 1977, in the wake of Daniel Ellsberg’s landmark release of the Pentagon Papers. After Ellsberg experienced fierce retaliation from the Nixon administration, it was clear something needed to be done to not only protect brave truth-tellers from government and corporate smear campaigns, but to combat rampant disinformation being foisted on the public by special interests. Since then, the Government Accountability Project has been instrumental in holding institutions accountable and defending the public good.

Since its founding in 1921, NARFE has been the only organization solely dedicated to the general welfare of all federal workers and retirees. For more than a century, NARFE has been a trusted source of knowledge, working to defend the nation’s civil servants so that they can focus on providing goods and services for the American people.

Background

Plaintiffs argue that the actions of defendants President Trump, the Office of Personnel Management, and its acting director, Charles Ezell, violate the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) and thereby the power of Congress to establish, define, and regulate the civil service system to protect the public interest in ensuring Americans have a federal workforce grounded in merit and free from corruption, political bias, and improper influences. Plaintiffs also argue that the President did not have authority to unilaterally revoke regulations that were issued after extensive notice and comment rulemaking.

Case Documents