Schedule Policy/Career week one: agency notices and pending litigation

By 10 June 2026 Executive Order 14410 of 3 June 2026, “Implementing Schedule Policy/Career in the Excepted Service,” reclassifying approximately 8,000 federal positions into Schedule Policy/Career — the operational successor to the Schedule F framework originally created by Executive Order 13957 of 21 October 2020 (revoked by Executive Order 14003 of 22 January 2021), reinstated and renamed by Executive Order 14171 of 20 January 2025, and finalised in regulation by the Office of Personnel Management Schedule Policy/Career final rule published 6 February 2026 — had been in effect for seven days.¹²³ The Office of Personnel Management issued implementation guidance to heads of departments and agencies on 8 June 2026 directing agencies to process the reclassification personnel actions with SF-50s effective 3 June 2026 and to complete the transfers within seven days of the order — by 10 June 2026.⁴ Government Executive reported on 5 June 2026 that the order drew immediate opposition from federal-employee unions and congressional Democrats.⁵ The National Treasury Employees Union said in a 4 June 2026 statement that it would challenge the reclassification in its pending litigation.⁶ No new lawsuit challenging Executive Order 14410 had been filed as of 10 June 2026; two pending cases position the challenge. In Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility v. Trump, No. 8:25-cv-00260 (D. Md.), filed 28 January 2025 before Judge Paula Xinis, plaintiffs represented by Democracy Forward moved on 4 March 2026 for leave to file a second amended complaint adding the American Federation of Government Employees, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO and AFGE Local 1923 as plaintiffs and challenging Executive Order 14171 and the OPM final rule.⁷ In National Treasury Employees Union v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-00170 (D.D.C.), filed 20 January 2025 before Judge Jia M. Cobb and stayed, the court on 17 March 2026 accepted NTEU’s proposal to file an amended complaint within 14 days of any executive order placing positions in Schedule Policy/Career.⁸

1. The civil-service reclassification operates under the OPM Schedule Policy/Career final rule, with the operative exclusion of policy-confidential excepted-service appointees from the adverse-action procedures of subchapter II of chapter 75 of title 5 flowing through the definition of “employee” at 5 U.S.C. § 7511(a)(1)(B), which excludes excepted-service appointees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating positions from the chapter 75 coverage that triggers the 30-day written-notice, answer, representation and written-decision rights of § 7513(b).⁹¹⁰ In plain terms, employees reclassified to Schedule Policy/Career become removable without the cause requirements and procedural rights of chapter 75; statutory whistleblower protections under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8), anti-discrimination protections (Title VII; ADEA; Rehabilitation Act), and veterans-preference rights for eligible employees under § 7511(a)(1)(B)(ii) are not addressed by the reclassification.¹¹

2. The pending challenges attack the framework, not yet the individual reclassifications. The second amended complaint in PEER v. Trump pleads that the Schedule Policy/Career framework exceeds the President’s authority under 5 U.S.C. § 3302 (presidential authority to except positions from the competitive service), conflicts with the Civil Service Reform Act’s adverse-action and appeal structure, and that the OPM final rule is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act at 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).⁷¹² NTEU’s stayed D.D.C. case tees up the same statutory questions against Executive Order 14171 itself; its court-accepted amendment window ties any new claims to the operative reclassification order.⁸ The administration’s statutory authorities for excepting positions from the competitive service sit at 5 U.S.C. § 3301 (presidential authority to prescribe regulations for the admission of individuals into the civil service) and § 3302; the Congressional Research Service’s March 2026 legal sidebar on the final rule frames the litigation questions for lawmakers.¹³¹²

3. The reclassification builds on the Schedule F advocacy in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Heritage Foundation, 21 April 2023), chapter 2 (authored by Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget and, at the time the chapter was authored, president of the Center for Renewing America), and runs alongside the Plum Book’s approximately 1,200 Senate-confirmable and 4,000 total political-appointee positions filled in the transition period under the Presidential Transition Act of 1963.¹⁴¹⁵ The approximately 8,000 positions reclassified by Executive Order 14410 — approximately 97 percent at GS-15 or Senior Level pay grades per the White House fact sheet — sit well below the initial estimate of up to 50,000 positions that OPM’s April 2025 proposed rule used for the Schedule Policy/Career category.¹⁶¹⁷ Federal employee unions and former senior career officials have publicly opposed the reclassification; conservative think tanks supporting the administration’s civil-service- reform agenda include the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Renewing America, and the America First Policy Institute (each disclosed as a conservative think tank or policy organisation with stated alignment to the administration on civil-service reform).¹⁸