Schedule F revived as Schedule Policy/Career

On 20 January 2025 President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order 14171, “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce,” invoking 5 U.S.C. §§ 3301, 3302, and 7511 as its statutory authority.¹ Section 2 of the order reinstates the framework of Executive Order 13957 of 21 October 2020 (“Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service”) — which President Biden had revoked by Executive Order 14003 of 22 January 2021 (“Protecting the Federal Workforce”) — under the new name “Schedule Policy/Career,” and directs each “head of an Executive department or agency” to identify positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character” and transfer them into the new schedule.¹²³ Section 3 holds the provisions of the April 2024 OPM final rule “Upholding Civil Service Protections and Merit System Principles” — codified at 5 CFR part 302 subpart F and at 5 CFR 210.102(b)(3)–(4) — “inoperative and without effect,” and directs OPM to “promptly … rescind” the rule through notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act.¹⁴ The Office of Personnel Management estimated in its 23 April 2025 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that approximately 50,000 positions — about two per cent of the federal civilian workforce — would be moved.⁵

1. Positions transferred to Schedule Policy/Career are excluded from the adverse-action protections of subchapter II of chapter 75 of title 5 by operation of 5 U.S.C. § 7511(b)(2), losing the 30-day written-notice, answer, representation, and written-decision procedures of § 7513(b) and the analogous procedures of § 7503(b) for shorter suspensions; in plain terms, covered employees become removable without the cause requirements and procedural rights of ch. 75.⁶⁷ Statutory whistleblower protections (5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8)), anti-discrimination protections (Title VII; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; the Rehabilitation Act), veterans-preference rights under § 7511(a)(1)(B) and the Veterans’ Preference Act, and constitutional protections are not addressed by the order. Agency identification under § 4 of the order proceeds on a 30-day initial-list deadline and a 90-day final-list deadline (verify against the order’s procedural-deadline clauses).

2. Section 2 of the order provides that employees in covered positions “must faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability” and that “[f]ailure to do so is grounds for dismissal.”¹ The 2020 Schedule F (EO 13957) did not include this explicit ground; the 2025 order makes implementation conformity a removal predicate.

3. Operative effects depend on the OPM rulemaking cycle. The April 2024 rule remained on the books pending APA rescission, and the transfer of specific positions depends on agency identification under § 4 of the order and on OPM guidance issued thereafter.