Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WHITE HOUSE NEWS—Proposed OPM rule weakens federal worker protections by reviving Trump’s ‘Schedule F’, (Apr 21, 2025)

By Marjorie Johnson, J.D.

Under the proposed rule, an estimated 50,000 federal workers deemed to have “policy-influencing” positions would lose their previous job protections in order to purportedly stop protecting “poor performers.”

On April 18, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a proposed rule reviving President Trump’s new “Schedule F” category of previously protected federal workers—now referred to in the proposed rule as “Schedule Policy/Career” civil servants—effectively eliminating the Biden administration’s protections of those career employees following Trump’s first attempt to strip them of the protections during his first term. OPM’s proposed rule, set to be published in the Federal Register on April 23, seeks to revise the civil service regulations “to allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or undermine the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives.”

Schedule F. During his last months in office during his first administration, Trump issued an executive order (EO) entitled “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service” (EO 13957), which created Schedule F in the Excepted Service. On January 22, 2021, however, President Biden revoked EO 13957 in his order on “Protecting the Federal Workforce” (EO 14003.).

On his first day in office following his reelection, Trump recreated Schedule F in his EO on “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.”

Trump’s latest order directed OPM to rescind regulations issued by the Biden administration to protect federal workers from losing job protections. The order stated that those regulations would be “inoperative” until they were formally revoked.

Schedule Policy/Career. OPM’s proposed rule formally creates “Schedule F” employees, renamed as “Schedule Policy/Career” employees. Federal employees who are moved into the new classification lose their ability to challenge their terminations through the merit system.

As a result, it will be easier for agencies to terminate them without cause. There are currently three lawsuits challenging the creation of the new category.

The OPM states that the goal of the rule is “to increase career employee accountability,” and that [a]gency supervisors report great difficulty removing employees for poor performance or misconduct.” Therefore, the “policy-influencing positions” that are moved into Schedule Policy/Career “will remain career jobs filled on a nonpartisan basis,” but will now “be at-will positions excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals.” According to the top federal HR department, this will “strengthen employee accountability and the democratic responsiveness of American government, while addressing longstanding performance management challenges in the Federal workforce.”

Comment window. OPM has provided a 30-day comment window. Once the rule has been finalized, an additional executive order issued by President Trump will complete the conversion of positions from the protected competitive service into the new at-will job category.

Fact Sheet. The same day that OPM announced its proposed rule, President Trump issued a Fact Sheet, which states that the proposed rule will fix a “broken system” because it “tackles systemic issues in federal workforce accountability, addressing unaccountable, policy-determining federal employees who put their own interests ahead of the American people’s.”

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