Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WHITE HOUSE NEWS—President Trump issues orders and announcements regarding federal employment, (Jan 22, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

The NTEU has already filed a lawsuit relating to the Schedule F order.

Soon after taking over the oval office on January 20, Trump began to issue executive orders and announce various other changes relating to federal employment. The announcements continue.

Schedule F order. In addition to the controversial “two sexes” order and others related to DEI in federal hiring, generally, and Equity Action Plans and so-called preferencing issued on his first day in office, Trump issued an order entitled “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce,” which recreates a Schedule F in the Excepted Service. During his previous administration, Trump issued Executive Order 13957 on October 21, 2020, and with the new order he has “immediately reinstated” that order with some amendments.

As it did with EO 13957, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has already filed a lawsuit against President Trump and his Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management alleging that the new order “attempts to strip civil service and due process protections from a large swath of federal employees, including many that NTEU represents.” The order, NTEU alleges, “directs agencies to move numerous employees into a new excepted service category with the goal that many would then be fired.”

“Yesterday’s Executive Order is a dangerous step backward to a political spoils system that Congress expressly rejected 142 years ago,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald, “which is why we are suing to have the order declared unlawful.”

Security clearances. Trump also issued a memorandum regarding the “backlog” of security clearances for individuals hired to work in the Executive Office of the President. “Because of this backlog and the bureaucratic process and broken security clearance process,” the memo states, “individuals who have not timely received the appropriate clearances are ineligible for access to the White House complex, infrastructure, and technology and are therefore unable to perform the duties for which they were hired.”

The memo instructs White House Counsel “to provide the White House Security Office and Acting Chief Security Officer with a list of personnel that are hereby immediately granted interim Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearances for a period not to exceed six months;” and instructs that “these individuals shall be immediately granted access to the facilities and technology necessary to perform the duties of the office to which they have been hired[.]” Thereafter, the memo states, the White House Counsel, as the President’s “designee, may supplement this list as necessary[.]”

Senior Executives. In another memo, regarding “Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives,” Trump announces his approach to Career Senior Executive Service (SES) officials, stating that because they “wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President.” The memo instructs the Directors of OPM and OMB to issue SES Performance Plans that “agencies must adopt” and instructs agency heads to take several actions with regard to those officials, including reassignment and removal under certain circumstances. It also instructs agency heads to terminate existing Executive Resources Boards and Performance Review Boards and institute new ones.

Hiring freeze. In yet another memorandum, Trump orders a freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees, stating that no civilian position that was vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, may be filled and no new position created except as otherwise provided. However, the order “does not apply to military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”

Related to the hiring freeze directive, the Acting Directors of OMB and OPM issued a memorandum on the same day as the Presidential Memorandum (PM), further clarifying where exemptions apply and how they can be requested. It also states: “Contracting outside the Government to circumvent the intent of the PM shall not be permitted.”

Probationary employee termination. In a memo regarding “Guidance on Probationary Periods, Administrative Leave and Details,” the OPM Acting Director, among other things, instructs that “No later than January 24, 2025, agencies should identify all employees on probationary periods, who have served less than a year in a competitive service appointment, or who have served less than two years in an excepted service appointment, and send a report to OPM listing all such employees...” and, additionally, “agencies should promptly determine whether those employees should be retained at the agency.”

Return to office. Another memorandum instructs agency and department heads to end remote work. It states: “Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.”

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