Trump’s Civil Service Jolt Crafted With Eye on Legal Challenges

The Trump administration’s campaign to strip civil service protections from thousands of federal workers appears strategically designed to withstand early legal challenges—and set the stage for a significant future expansion, critics say.

President Donald Trump on June 3 reclassified roughly 8,000 federal jobs as at-will positions, far fewer than the 50,000 that the administration projected earlier this year. The positions reclassified—nearly all of which are high-level policy and legal roles—are more likely to withstand court scrutiny than lower-ranking positions because they have clearer policymaking duties, according to attorneys and policy experts.

Trump has reserved the right to add more positions and previously expressed interest in a more expansive policy. His first attempt in 2020, known as Schedule F, might have covered hundreds of thousands of employees, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

White House officials insist Trump has no imminent plans to strip civil service protections from more federal workers, but those fighting against the policy aren’t buying it after the last 18 months of layoffs and incentivized departures across the government.

“It’s not obvious to me that this is the end of the story,” said Gabe Menchaca, a former adviser in the Biden White House budget office who studies the civil service. “It may be that they feel the shackles are off.”

Legal Fights

The administration faces multiple lawsuits challenging the Schedule Policy/Career designation, some filed in 2025 but paused by the courts pending the final executive order. The final version is narrower in scope than many expected and appears targeted to posts that influence policy.

Reclassifying 8,000 high-ranking roles is easier to defend than 50,000 because senior employees often directly deal with policymaking, while lower positions are expected to execute it.

A broader group could have triggered what’s known as the major questions doctrine, a legal principle that says agencies cannot enact policies with widespread political or economic effects without clear congressional authorization.

Narrowing the pool could undercut legal claims from unions and good-government groups, who initially highlighted the widespread scope of the anticipated rule.

Two groups, the National Treasury Employees Union and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, already were challenging Trump’s authority to make sweeping changes to the workforce without clear congressional consent. They say that Schedule Policy/Career allows the president to unilaterally repurpose agency employees, violating the Civil Service Reform Act— a package of post-Watergate reforms—as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

NTEU’s January 2025 complaintwarned the policy would target a “large swath of federal employees” represented by the union. The complaint notes that presidents have created narrow exceptions to the competitive service, but warned that Trump wanted one that “was designed to be broad and numerically unlimited.”

Within hours of the final executive order, groups were working to file amended complaints with new information. Martha Santizo, a spokesperson for Protect Democracy, which is involved in a lawsuitalongside the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said the group hoped to have more to announce within the next 21 days.

“There is no sign that these litigants are slowing down,” said Norman Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer who served as Democratic counsel for Trump’s first impeachment. “On the contrary, they’re speeding up.”

Administration Response

Administration officials pushed back on the claim that Schedule Policy/Career can be used to quietly terminate workers. The sole intention, they say, is to remove career employees who are either incompetent or out to stall Trump’s agenda.

“We’ve also been very explicit that this is not a tool for doing significant reductions in force or layoffs,” Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, told reporters last week. “These are just individuals who will be evaluated based on their own merit, but this cannot be a tool to remove kind of large swaths of individuals from government.”

In the same press briefing, another administration official said there were no immediate plans to reclassify more positions—but made it clear Trump could change his mind at any time.

The administration has argued in similar cases that workers’ legal challenges should first go before the Merit Systems Protection Board, the administrative body that handles federal worker grievances.

The Treasury employees’ union on June 8 asked the US Supreme Court to limit or eliminate a legal doctrine known as Thunder Basin, which governs when cases should first go to the MSPB and similar administrative panels.

“Congress could not have intended federal district courts to be divested of their jurisdiction over these claims so that they could go to administrative agencies that lack the authority to adjudicate them,” the NTEU wrote in a brief.

Some opponents say they have a strong case regardless of how many workers Trump reclassifies.

“We have to start with the baseline illegality,” Eisen said. “Moves even in lesser numbers are illegal. We should not be stripping civil service protections from nonpartisan officials.”

The effort was first proposed as Schedule F in late 2020, but it was repealed early the next year by then-President Joe Biden.

A White House fact sheet issued last week on the Schedule Policy/Career order said Trump is “delivering on his promise to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our government from Washington ineptitude and corruption.”