Schedule F (Now "Schedule Policy/Career") Employment Re-instated, Potentially Across the Entire HHS

The Office of Personnel Management now has broad, HHS-wide power to terminate HHS Employees who fail to implement new policies.

The centralization of go/no-go on hiring and dismissal may, or may not, take agency heads out of the picture.

Schedule F employment, i.e., appointed position in Health and Human Services, was rescinded on January 22, 2021, by Executive Order 14003 during the Biden administration, meaning no HHS employees were classified under Schedule F at that time.

On January 20, 2025, an executive order reinstating and updating Schedule F (now renamed Schedule Policy/Career) made several key modifications to the original Executive Order 13957 (October 21, 2020).

Key points:

1. Name Change

• The classification "Schedule F" was renamed "Schedule Policy/Career" throughout the order.

2. Strengthened Presidential Oversight

• The new order explicitly states that Schedule Policy/Career employees must faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability.

• It clarifies that employees do not have to personally or politically support the President, but failure to implement policies is grounds for dismissal (Sec. 3(f)(ii)).

3. Modification of Removal Protections

• The order reinstates and modifies adverse action procedures, specifying that employees in Schedule Policy/Career positions will be subject to different disciplinary procedures than the competitive service.

• Unlike the original Schedule F, which left some ambiguity, the new version ensures that dismissal processes overrule certain civil service protections.

4. Expanded Criteria for Inclusion

• A new provision (Sec. 3(e)(ii)) expands the types of positions that can be placed under Schedule Policy/Career, including:

  • Supervisors of Schedule Policy/Career employees

  • Any position that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director deems appropriate for reclassification. The OPM is the federal agency responsible for managing the U.S. civil service workforce. It oversees most federal employees' hiring, benefits, retirement, and human resources policy.

• This widens the scope beyond the original version, potentially affecting more employees.

• Some speculate the initial reclassification of position may involve as many as the entire HHS workforce.

5. Stronger Role for OPM Director

• In the 2020 order, agency heads were directed to identify positions for reclassification.

• This authority is now centralized in the OPM Director, who must recommend to the President which positions should be included in Schedule Policy/Career (Sec. 3(e)(iii)).

6. Reversal of Biden’s Civil Service Protections

• The order rescinds all civil service protections implemented by Executive Order 14003 (January 22, 2021).

• Until regulations protecting civil service employees are fully rescinded, certain federal regulations (5 CFR 302, subpart F, and others) will be held inoperative (Sec. 4).

• This effectively undoes Biden-era efforts to shield career civil servants from politically motivated firings.

7. Future Expansion of Affected Positions

• The OPM Director must issue guidance within 30 days on additional categories of positions that agencies should consider for reclassification into Schedule Policy/Career (Sec. 5).

• This means the scope of affected employees could continue growing.

Summary of Key Differences

Bottom Line

This version of Schedule F is more centralized, broader in scope, and explicitly mandates compliance with administration policies. It gives the President and OPM Director more authority over reclassification, making it easier to remove employees deemed resistant to the administration’s agenda.

The Trump and Biden administrations approached federal employment with fundamentally different goals: Trump sought to make the workforce directly accountable to executive leadership, while Biden sought to limit the extent to which the executive branch could remove policy-making and policy-interpreting employees. This divide shaped their policies on hiring, accountability, and job protections, with each administration claiming to uphold merit-based employment while defining merit in starkly different ways.

The Trump administration viewed the federal workforce as an extension of executive authority, responsible for carrying out the President’s policy agenda without obstruction. This perspective led to policies aimed at increasing accountability, removing bureaucratic resistance, and ensuring that employees in policy-making positions were fully committed to implementing administration directives. The reinstatement of Schedule F as Schedule Policy/Career reflected this philosophy by reclassifying potentially thousands of policy-influencing positions, removing civil service protections, and making it easier to dismiss employees deemed unwilling or unable to execute administration priorities. Trump’s administration position is that this reform has restored a true merit-based system, where competence was measured not only by technical expertise but also by an employee’s effectiveness in advancing the elected leadership’s agenda. Under this framework, merit was not only about expertise but also about an employee’s responsiveness to administration priorities

Alongside Schedule Policy/Career, the administration pursued an effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce, which it viewed as bloated and inefficient. Voluntary resignations with benefits are being offered as a means of streamlining agencies, and targeted buyouts were introduced at agencies like the CIA to realign personnel with national security objectives. These measures reflect Trump’s broader view that the federal government should be leaner, more responsive, and less insulated from presidential authority.

The Biden administration, by contrast, viewed federal employees as career professionals whose expertise and institutional knowledge provided a stabilizing force in government. From this perspective, insulating civil servants from political influence was essential to ensuring continuity and maintaining policy integrity across changing administrations. One of Biden’s first actions in office was to revoke Schedule F, which his administration saw as a direct threat to the apolitical nature of the civil service. The White House reaffirmed that merit should be based on competitive hiring, experience, and expertise rather than an employee’s willingness to implement political directives. This decision was widely supported by federal employee unions and civil service advocates, who warned that Schedule F would politicize policy-making positions, turning them into patronage appointments at the expense of long-term institutional knowledge.

Biden’s administration also expanded hiring initiatives under the umbrella of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), arguing that a diverse workforce would better serve the American public. The administration sought to increase the representation of historically underrepresented groups in leadership positions, implementing policies designed to recruit and promote individuals from diverse backgrounds. Critics of these initiatives contended that they risked prioritizing demographic characteristics over experience or technical qualifications, potentially undermining traditional merit-based hiring practices. Supporters countered that DEI efforts addressed long-standing hiring inequities and ensured that federal agencies reflected the diversity of the nation they served. While DEI hiring initiatives were a point of contention, they marked a clear departure from Trump’s approach, which had emphasized that hiring and promotions should be based strictly on competence and job performance rather than demographic factors.

In addition to reversing Schedule F, Biden made it more difficult to fire career civil servants, even in policy roles. His administration restored collective bargaining rights, increased wage protections, and reinforced job security, arguing that a well-protected civil service was necessary to maintain government stability. This was a fundamental break from Trump’s workforce policies, which had sought to limit union influence and expedite the removal of employees who resisted administration priorities. Biden’s approach reflected a belief that federal employees should be protected from political pressure, even if it made it harder for an administration to replace personnel who disagreed with its policy direction.

Both administrations claimed to support merit-based hiring, but their definitions of merit were fundamentally different. The Trump administration viewed merit as including an employee’s ability and willingness to implement executive policies, whereas the Biden administration adhered to progressive hiring practices, enhanced by civil service protections. Trump’s approach emphasized ensuring that policy-making roles were staffed by individuals who aligned with the administration’s goals, even if that meant reducing workforce protections, regardless of political affiliation. Biden, in contrast, Biden’s administration reversed Trump-era workforce policies, reinforcing civil service protections and limiting the President’s ability to remove career officials in policy-influencing roles. Biden’s administration favored long-term employment whether individuals executed policy properly or not, which critics have called “careerism”.

This ideological divide reflected a broader debate about the nature of governance. The Trump administration sought to make the federal workforce more directly accountable to the elected executive, arguing that bureaucratic resistance impeded democratic decision-making. The Biden administration framed civil service protections as a mechanism for preserving institutional expertise, while critics viewed them as an entrenched bureaucracy and a barrier to implementing the elected administration’s agenda.

With the return of Schedule Policy/Career in 2025, this battle over the role of federal employees is poised to continue, with legal challenges and political disputes likely to shape the future of federal employment policy.

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