Washington, D.C. — In his latest attempt to implement a sweeping plan to convert tens of thousands of merit-based, nonpartisan civil servants into at-will employees who can be stripped of civil service protections and fired without cause, President Trump today signed an executive order that advances the administration’s effort to implement “Schedule Policy/Career” (Schedule P/C), a policy that strips longstanding civil service protections from a significant portion of the federal workforce. If implemented, Schedule P/C would make it far easier for political appointees to remove experienced public servants.
Democracy Forward is already actively challenging Schedule P/C in court in PEER et al. v. Trump et al because these actions threaten due process protections guaranteed under federal law and exceed the president’s constitutional authority. Alongside the Law Office of Jonathan Weissglass and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Democracy Forward represents Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and a coalition of unions and labor federations, including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the AFL-CIO, and AFGE Local 1923.
In response to today’s executive order, Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, said: “For generations, our country has relied on a professional, nonpartisan civil service. The people responsible for protecting our public health, safeguarding our environment, delivering our mail, managing our airports, protecting our public lands, and enforcing our laws should be allowed to do their jobs, not targeted by the same government they serve. The Trump-Vance administration’s attempts to dismantle civil service protections would make it easier to purge experienced public servants. When government experts can be fired without cause, it’s not just federal workers who are harmed — it’s the people across the country who rely on these essential services every day.”
PEER et al. v. Trump et al. is currently pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
