A new lawsuit contends that a pair of recent final rules from OPM exceeds statutory authority and violates the intent of the Civil Service Reform Act.
The Trump administration is facing a new lawsuit from federal unions after it issued a pair of recent final rules overhauling federal employee suitability standards and performance evaluations.
Filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the unions’ lawsuit contends that the Office of Personnel Management exceeded statutory authority and violated the intent of the Civil Service Reform Act when it issued regulations to change suitability and fitness regulations and reshape the performance management system for the federal workforce.
Taken together, the changes will make it easier for OPM and agencies to fire federal employees, while limiting opportunity for employees to challenge their removals or other adverse actions, the unions argued. Their lawsuit is the latest of several legal challenges unions are taking against the Trump administration’s efforts to revise federal workforce policies and regulations.
The American Federation of Government Employees is leading the lawsuit, with other plaintiffs including the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
“Congress built the civil service on a simple principle — that public servants are hired, judged and fired on merit, not on politics,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said. “OPM does not have the authority to write those protections out of the law, and no statute gives it the sweeping power it has claimed here. OPM wants to fire people itself and then review its own decision. That is not accountability, and it is not what Congress wrote.”
An OPM spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing the agency’s policy of not commenting on pending litigation.
The unions are seeking to halt and reverse the two recent final rules from OPM: The first is a change from June that allows agencies to apply the same suitability standards used for federal job applicants to all current federal employees. The rule allows for expedited firings if employees are deemed not to meet the government’s suitability and fitness standards, aligning with other efforts from the Trump administration to expand agencies’ flexibility for removing workers.
OPM said in the final rule that expanding suitability standards to cover federal employees in addition to job applicants closes an “irrational gap.”
But the unions argued that OPM’s rule will be “an open invitation to fire public servants who speak out,” plaintiffs wrote in a press release.
The lawsuit also challenges a separate rule OPM finalized in July, which overhauled the government’s performance management system. The regulations allow for a forced distribution system in employee evaluations — something that had previously been banned for decades. The final rule also removes federal employees’ ability to challenge their rating through grievance and arbitration proceedings.
OPM officials have said the new performance management regulations were necessary to address longstanding inflation in federal employees’ annual evaluations.
But the unions contended that using a forced distribution system will unlawfully force agencies to evaluate employees against one another, rather than against “objective criteria” — in effect, violating the Civil Service Reform Act.
The unions also argued that OPM’s recent rule altering the process for suitability action appeals erodes the possibility for an independent review of suitability-related removals. OPM officials, however, have said the changes are not meant to erode the independence of the process, but instead make it more efficient and cost-effective.
OPM’s two regulations are part of a broader reshaping by the Trump administration of federal personnel policy — adding more options to fire civil servants, weakening merit system principles and unlawfully expanding OPM’s authority, according to the group of unions.
“This is yet another blatant effort by the Trump administration to make it easier to unjustly discipline and fire dedicated federal workers and diminish the critical public services they provide every day,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin said. “We are confident that OPM’s proposed regulations stretch far beyond the agency’s authority and the courts will share our view that these rules are simply unlawful.”
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