This hasn’t gotten much attention, but it should.
While everyone was focused on Schedule F, the administration created something even broader. On July 30, a new OPM rule took effect that creates a second way to fire federal employees outside the normal civil service process.
For decades, “suitability” reviews were mainly used as background checks for job applicants. A 2011 ruling made clear that OPM could not use them against people already working in government. That protection is now gone.
Under the new rule, OPM and agency heads can remove current employees through a suitability action without using the normal Chapter 75 process or providing the standard 30-day notice.
The list of possible offenses should concern everyone: filing taxes late, refusing to sign a nondisclosure agreement, or “misusing” government equipment, whatever officials decide that means. At the same time, OPM is pushing a standardized NDA for roughly 2 million federal workers, while House Oversight has launched an investigation into tax delinquency among federal employees. These actions do not appear unrelated. They fit together.
The final piece takes effect September 2. Appeals of suitability removals will no longer go to the independent Merit Systems Protection Board. Instead, they will go back to OPM and be decided on paper, without a hearing. In other words, the agency that writes the rule can bring the charge and then decide the appeal.
Schedule F targeted roughly 8,000 policy-related positions. This rule could reach nearly everyone in the federal workforce. This is the kind of political control over federal employees that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was intended to prevent. It is a return to Nixonian government.
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