HHS strips civil service protections from hundreds of senior employees

The Trump administration emailed hundreds of HHS employees on Friday, May 15, 2026, informing them their positions would be reclassified from competitive service to Schedule Policy/Career. The email described the initial tranche as affecting "a relatively modest number, on the order of hundreds not thousands" of personnel, with "additional tranches" of conversions to follow. An HHS official confirmed the email's authenticity to Reuters but didn't specify which agencies or positions were targeted.

The category affected is GS-15, the highest non-executive pay grade in the federal General Schedule. GS-15 employees typically serve as senior technical experts, division managers, high-level policy staff, and supervisors. Their annual salaries range from roughly $120,000 to $175,000 depending on locality.

Schedule Policy/Career is the Trump administration's rebrand of Schedule F, a classification first created by Executive Order 13957 in October 2020. President Biden revoked Schedule F on his second day in office via Executive Order 14003. Trump reinstated it as Schedule Policy/Career through Executive Order 14171, signed January 20, 2025, the day he took office.

The key legal change: employees reclassified into Schedule Policy/Career become at-will workers. They can be fired without cause, lose the right to advance notice of removal, and can't appeal terminations to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The policy targets positions OPM defines as "confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating" in character.

OPM finalized the implementing rule on February 5, 2026, published as "Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service" (91 FR 5580). The rule took effect March 9, 2026. OPM estimated approximately 50,000 positions across the federal government could ultimately be reclassified, roughly 2% of the total federal workforce.

The rule received over 40,000 public comments during its 45-day comment period, with approximately 94% opposing the regulation. OPM Director Scott Kupor, confirmed by the Senate in a 49-46 vote in July 2025, defended the rule as centered on "accountability" rather than politicization.

HHS is the first major agency to implement Schedule Policy/Career reclassifications at scale. The department has already undergone severe workforce disruption under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversaw a restructuring that cut roughly 20,000 positions, consolidated 28 divisions into 15, and reduced 10 regional offices to 5. Kennedy later acknowledged that approximately 2,000 of those cuts were made in error.

The Schedule Policy/Career reclassification adds a new layer: rather than eliminating positions outright, it strips protections from employees who remain. The surviving senior staff now face the prospect of at-will employment, meaning they can be fired for any reason that isn't explicitly prohibited by anti-discrimination or whistleblower statutes.

Reclassified employees lose access to the Office of Special Counsel, the independent agency that currently investigates whistleblower retaliation claims. Instead, whistleblower complaints would be handled internally by each agency. Tom Devine, legal director at the Government Accountability Project, called this shift a gutting of real protections, warning that for covered employees "their whistleblower protections and other merit system rights would be a bad joke."

The practical impact extends beyond formal firings. Federal News Network reported in April 2026 that the reclassification could chill whistleblowing long before anyone gets terminated, because employees who know they can be dismissed at will are far less likely to report waste, fraud, or safety violations.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley called Schedule Policy/Career "a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service." He warned it "will amount to one of the largest acts of political corruption in American history" if allowed to proceed. AFGE, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, PEER, and Democracy Forward filed a Second Amended Complaint on March 4, 2026, before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland.

The coalition argues the administration exceeded presidential authority by unilaterally creating a new employment category that Congress never authorized. They contend the term "policy-influencing" has been used in federal statute exclusively to describe political appointees, not career civil servants.

Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said the administration's action "has nothing to do with restoring merit in federal employment." He argued the new designation "can be used to remove expert career federal employees who place the law and service to the public ahead of blind loyalty and replace them with political supporters." The Partnership for Public Service is a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 2001 that works on government management issues.

The Economic Policy Institute's analysis concluded that Schedule Policy/Career enables the president to fire federal workers deemed disloyal, shifting government work away from public interest toward presidential interests.

The administration frames the policy as necessary accountability reform. OPM Director Scott Kupor told Federal News Network the rule targets employees in "highly-paid policy-making management positions" and argued that current civil service protections make "accountability for poor performance and misconduct exceedingly rare." Americans for Prosperity Foundation submitted public comments supporting the rule, arguing that career staff in high-impact policy roles who "cannot be effectively managed or removed for serious misconduct" make agencies less effective.

The Heritage Foundation has advocated broadly for the president to "make liberal use of his power of appointment" and insisted on accountability while maintaining distinctions between career and non-career employees.

The merit-based civil service traces back to the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, signed by President Chester Arthur after the assassination of President James Garfield by a disgruntled office seeker. The act replaced the patronage system with competitive examinations, prohibited firing employees for political reasons, and created the Civil Service Commission. It initially covered about 10% of federal workers but now encompasses most of the federal workforce.

Schedule Policy/Career's critics argue it effectively reverses 143 years of merit system evolution by reintroducing political loyalty as a de facto employment condition. Defenders counter that modern civil service protections have become so rigid they prevent presidents from managing the executive branch they were elected to lead.

Reclassified employees also lose eligibility for recruitment, retention, and relocation pay incentives, as well as student loan repayment options that agencies use to attract and keep specialized talent. For HHS, which competes with the private pharmaceutical and biotech sectors for scientists, epidemiologists, and data analysts, this loss of compensation tools compounds the reclassification's chilling effect.

The Government Accountability Project and the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association filed a separate lawsuit in the D.C. District Court challenging Schedule Policy/Career's creation. Multiple legal fronts are now active, though no court has yet blocked the reclassifications from proceeding.