The amended complaint follows president Trump’s Executive Order implementing Schedule Policy/Career earlier this month

Washington D.C. — Today, Government Accountability Project and the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), represented by Protect Democracy and Selendy Gay PLLC, filed an amended complaint against the Trump Administration in their lawsuit challenging the creation and implementation of Schedule Policy/Career (Schedule P/C) in the federal civil service. 

Schedule P/C converts career, nonpartisan federal workers to at-will employees, which would allow the Trump Administration to remove civil servants for any reason or no reason, and strips existing career employees of their employment protections.

The president’s June 3rd Executive Order 14410, “Implementing Schedule Policy/Career in the Excepted Service,” moved about 8,000 federal positions to Schedule P/C, reclassifying thousands of nonpartisan employees and stripping them of congressionally established protections from political retribution and whistleblower protections. The Order may be just the first wave of reclassifications, as the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) previously estimated that 50,000 positions would be moved.

The amended complaint argues that the creation and implementation of Schedule P/C violates the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) and intrudes on the Congress’s power to establish, define, and regulate the federal civil service to ensure Americans have a federal workforce grounded in merit and free from corruption, political bias, and improper influences. The amended complaint also argues that stripping current federal employees of their rights under the CSRA violates due process, and the OPM rule promulgated to implement Schedule P/C was arbitrary and capricious.  

“Schedule P/C is antithetical to the merit based civil service system that Congress created to prevent political cronyism. It opens the door to expanded political influence over government actions that should be determined by objective criteria and the faithful execution of the law,” said NARFE National President William Shackelford. “That includes politically motivated law enforcement, threatening individual liberty; politically determined contract and grant awards, threatening greater corruption and waste of taxpayer dollars; and politically selective provision of services, threatening failure of government operations for disfavored groups or localities. NARFE is proud to fight against Schedule P/C to preserve the nonpartisan, professional civil service for both public servants and the American people.”

”Congress created a system to protect federal workers who report violations of the public’s trust, and Schedule P/C removes those protections from wide swaths of federal workers,” said Dana Gold, Director of Government Accountability Project’s Democracy Protection Initiative. “If career civil servants believe they can be retaliated against for raising concerns, many will understandably stay silent. Our country suffers when its nonpartisan public servants are too intimidated to tell the truth.” 

“The merit-based civil service that Congress established serves the American people by ensuring that employees are hired and retained based on merit, not their political support for the President. Schedule P/C is this administration’s latest attempt to politicize the nonpartisan, career civil service to reward the President’s supporters and punish his perceived opponent, ” said Ori Lev, Special Counsel at Protect Democracy. “Schedule P/C also purports to strip thousands of career civil servants of their protection from political retribution, including whistleblower protections that encourage employees to disclose gross abuses of power. The administration’s action violates both the constitution and the law, and we will continue to fight on behalf of federal workers and the rule of law. ”

For more information on the case visit our webpage. The amended complaint is here.

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ABOUT US Protect Democracy is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group working to prevent American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government. Founded in 1977, Government Accountability Project is the leading international whistleblower protection organization. Through litigating whistleblower cases, publicizing concerns and developing legal reforms, Government Accountability Project’s mission is to protect the public interest by promoting government, corporate, and international organization accountability. Government Accountability Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.  As the only organization solely dedicated to the general welfare of all federal workers and retirees, NARFE delivers valuable guidance, timely resources and powerful advocacy. For more than 100 years, NARFE has been a trusted source of knowledge for the federal community, Capitol Hill, the executive branch and the media.