OPM Rules Scrap Decades of Legal Precedent and Undermine Nonpartisan Civil Service, Lawsuit Asserts
August 25, 2026 - San Francisco – The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), along with the American Federation of 
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), and with the assistance of Democracy Forward, on Monday filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California challenging two new rules issued by the Trump-Vance administration overhauling how federal employees are disciplined and how their performance is judged. The unions are represented by Altshuler Berzon LLP, Jonathan Weissglass, and Democracy Forward.
Both rules issued by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) scrap decades of legal precedent and are inconsistent with the nonpartisan civil service created by Congress nearly 150 years ago and run counter to the laws that Congress passed to strengthen a nonpartisan, merit-based civil service.
The first rule being challenged in the lawsuit, the Suitability Rule, lets OPM decide on its own that a civil service employee is “unsuitable” for their position and order them fired, taking that decision away from the agency that actually employs them. A separate rule issued by OPM also strips employees of independent review of these actions and makes OPM, the same agency that fired them, the only avenue for review. OPM wrote the rule, brings the case, and judges its own work. By OPM’s own estimate, half of all federal firings will run through this system. The standards are broad and subjective enough to reach political speech, which is an open invitation to fire public servants who speak out, without regard to their value to their agencies and the American people.
The second rule upends decades of how performance is evaluated and opens the door to rating employees on a curve. Instead of measuring public servants against objective standards, as the law requires, the rule leads to ranking them against each other. Large numbers of high performers will be rated lower for no reason other than the curve, and a lower rating makes them easier to discipline and easier to fire. The rule also cancels their right to challenge an unfair rating once current contracts expire, and it drops the requirement that a manager’s boss sign off before an employee is branded a poor performer.
The unions’ lawsuit challenges both rules under the Administrative Procedure Act as arbitrary, capricious, contrary to law, and beyond the authority Congress gave OPM. The complaint shows these rules were put together haphazardly and are contrary to the Civil Service Reform Act. OPM told the public it was making no changes to employees’ appeal rights, when it had already proposed months earlier to take those appeals away from the Merit Systems Protection Board and hand them to itself.
“Congress built the civil service on a simple principle – that public servants are hired, judged, and fired on merit, not on politics. 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,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said. “That is why AFGE is in court today with our fellow federal unions. Together we represent nearly one million of the 2.5 million people who inspect the food supply, care for veterans, and keep this country running. Every one of them deserves to be judged on the work they do.”
“Once again this administration is disrespecting public service workers to the detriment of public safety and health,” said AFSCME President Patrick Moran. “The federal workers who keep our food supply safe and air travel secure should be able to do their jobs without worrying about political hacks firing them without cause. They deserve to be evaluated based on whether they are doing a good job for our country, not pitted against one another. AFSCME members will fight this transparent attempt to purge even more qualified public service workers from an already depleted civil service.”
“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,” said NFFE National President Randy Erwin. “NFFE is proud to join our federal union colleagues in this lawsuit to protect the core principle that the civil service should be based on merit – not loyalty to a president or political party. 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.”
“These rules proposed by the Trump Administration are yet another illegal continuation of their attacks on federal workers and the apolitical civil service, as they seek to eliminate long-held worker due process rights while implementing a ‘fox guarding the henhouse’ employee appeal process,” said IFPTE President Matt Biggs. “These actions are un-American, which is why IFPTE is proud to join this lawsuit.”
“Civil servants are the neighbors who provide essential government services that keep people healthy and safe, and the Trump-Vance administration is doing harm to communities across the country by unlawfully attacking federal employees and trying to make it harder for them to do their important jobs,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “We are honored to continue our work with this courageous coalition of federal employee unions to defend civil servants and to fight back against this lawless administration.”
The case is American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO et al v. United States Office of Personnel Management et al, and the legal team at Democracy Forward on this matter includes Elena Goldstein and Lesley Farby.
Read the filing here.
Source: Democracy Forward
