In response to President Trump’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order on Schedule Policy/Career federal workers, which updates the previous Schedule F order, Scott Michelman, Legal Director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said:
“The federal workforce executive order is a power-grab by Trump, expanding his authority to fire employees he perceives as insufficiently loyal. During Trump’s last administration, he bumped up against federal workers who were following the law, rather than indiscriminately following his orders. Federal workers should not be fired because they are more loyal to the U.S. Constitution than they are to the president. That is a threat to both our constitutional values and the rule of law.
Trump’s Executive Order threatens the First Amendment rights of federal employees. The order’s true goal is to target workers based on their real or perceived disloyalty to the president and his political aims. Before the election, Vice President Vance said that the president should ‘fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant’ and ‘replace them with our people.’ Last night’s order paves the way for Trump to fire workers based on what they say on personal social media accounts, their political donation records, or other protected activities. These are all unconstitutional reasons to fire career government workers.
Stripping federal employees of their rights not only raises First Amendment concerns; it is an ineffective way to provide critical services that people rely on every day. As far back as 1883, Congress recognized that giving government jobs based on loyalty to the president was both a dangerous abuse of power and an inefficient way to run a government. For most of the 19th century, the federal civil service operated under a ‘spoils system’ in which the party in the White House handed out federal jobs based on political support, instead of competence and experience. That system failed to provide critical services, was riddled with corruption and incompetence, and further degraded people’s trust in the government. Congress created a merit-based federal jobs system in both 1883 and 1978 so that professionals could work in the best interest of the American people rather than working in the interest of a politician or party.”