The Solidarity Docket
February 26, 2026
This week's docket covers the final regulatory steps implementing Schedule P/C, proposed rules that would shift employee appeals from the MSPB to OPM, continuing litigation over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's workforce, a GAO accounting of workforce losses during the first half of 2025, and two Rise Up trainings on debt letters and EEOC telework accommodations.
Schedule P/C Implementation Advances; Appeals Forum Eliminated
The Merit Systems Protection Board published a final rule in the February 23 Federal Register revoking its own jurisdiction to hear appeals from employees converted from the competitive service to the excepted service under Schedule Policy/Career (Schedule P/C). The Board stated it had no discretion in the matter, acting to mirror OPM's rescission of the regulatory basis for that jurisdiction. The rule is effective March 9.
Conversions under Schedule P/C are set to begin as early as next week. By March 9, the President is expected to have approved agency proposals covering an estimated 50,000 positions in an initial tranche. Additional positions may be converted in future phases.
Under Schedule P/C, career employees are converted to the excepted service and become at-will, losing civil service protections including removal procedures and MSPB appeal rights.
Legal challenges to Schedule P/C were filed in early 2025, and further litigation against the implementing rules is expected. Schedule P/C differs from its predecessor, Schedule F, in specifying that designations are made by the President and that hiring must proceed through a competitive process, changes designed to respond to earlier legal challenges.
For affected civil servants, the question of where converted workers may challenge their reclassification or any subsequent adverse action is now an open and critical legal issue. Rise Up is tracking this closely and will update our litigation tracker as cases develop.
Our partners at Democracy Forward have prepared a comprehensive summary of OPM's regulation on Schedule P/C, how it affects the rights of federal civil servants, and what happens next.
OPM Proposes to Consolidate Employee Appeals, Raising Due Process Concerns
Separate from the Schedule P/C rules, OPM has proposed regulations that would move appeals for probationary employee, suitability and reductions in force from the MSPB to OPM itself. The agency frames the change as reducing burden on the MSPB, but critics argue it collapses the distinction between the agency that makes personnel policy and the agency that adjudicates disputes about that policy.
Jenny Mattingley, Vice President for Public Policy at the Partnership for Public Service noted that OPM was originally separated from the Civil Service Commission precisely because combining policymaking and adjudication within a single agency was recognized as a structural conflict of interest. The proposed rules would reverse that separation.
Raymond Limon, former Vice Chair of the MSPB and a frequent contributor to Rise Up's work, offered detailed analysis of why the proposed transfer raises serious due process concerns. He identified five specific ways in which OPM cannot function as a disinterested adjudicator: OPM drafts the very regulations being contested; it advises agencies on how to implement them; it issues guidance on mass RIF actions; it reports to and serves the same administration that ordered the personnel actions at issue; and it has an institutional interest in upholding decisions that reflect its own policy positions.
Limon also stressed that adjudicating RIF, suitability, and probationary employee appeals requires specialized expertise that general human resources functions do not possess. RIF cases require mastery of 5 CFR Part 351, including competitive areas, retention registers, bump-and-retreat rights, and veterans' preference rules. Suitability cases implicate sensitive personal records. Probationary employee cases require careful analysis of discriminatory motive and pretext - skills that MSPB judges develop through years of practice.
Limon has called on the MSPB to use its statutory oversight authority under 5 U.S.C. § 1204(f) to evaluate whether OPM's proposed regulations would violate merit system principles or require prohibited personnel practices before those rules take effect. His full analysis is available on LinkedIn.
D.C. Circuit Hears Oral Argument in CFPB RIF Case
This week the full D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, heard oral arguments in NTEU, et al. v. Vought, the case challenging the acting director's attempt to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and issue reductions in force to approximately 90% of the agency's roughly 1,700-person workforce.
The district court's preliminary injunction, which has preserved the agency's operations and prevented mass layoffs, remains in force pending the en banc decision. The court's December 2025 clarification also remains operative: the government cannot avoid the injunction by declining to request Federal Reserve funding that the law authorizes.
At oral argument, the government argued that employees challenging layoffs must channel claims through the Civil Service Reform Act to the MSPB, and that no plan to close the CFPB has ever existed. One judge noted the apparent tension in the government's channeling argument given OPM's proposal to remove RIF appeals from MSPB jurisdiction. The government acknowledged that MSPB currently retains that jurisdiction.
NTEU argued that unilaterally eliminating a congressionally created agency violates separation of powers, and that a narrowly tailored injunction would be unworkable in practice. If the court finds the government was attempting an unlawful shutdown, NTEU argued, keeping employees in place is the only meaningful remedy.
Several judges indicated the court might remand to the district judge to narrow the injunction's scope; others expressed openness to maintaining it in full. The court's decision is pending. We will post it to our litigation tracker when it issues.
GAO Report Details Scale of Federal Workforce Losses in First Half of 2025
A new Government Accountability Office report, drawing on OPM data and agency-level reporting, provides additional detail on workforce departures during the first six months of the current administration. Across the 23 CFO Act agencies studied, 134,122 employees separated between January and June 2025.
Of those separations, approximately 77% were retirements or resignations. Roughly 19% were terminations or removals.
OPM has separately reported that approximately 317,000 federal workers left government over the full year 2025. The GAO data, covering only the first half of 2025 and only CFO Act agencies, reflects a fraction of that total. Full GovExec coverage here.
Rise Up Trainings: Debt Letters and EEOC Telework Accommodations
Federal Debt Letters and Wage Garnishment Rights
Volunteer and expert attorneys at Rise Up clinics have reported a significant increase in federal employees and former employees receiving debt collection notices from the government, sometimes accompanied by threats of wage garnishment. This week, Rise Up hosted a training on the legal rights of federal workers who receive such notices, led by Ben Hunter, General Counsel for the Federal Education Association Stateside-Region, an affiliate of the National Education Association.
Recording available here. Passcode: z.Ea2sqR
EEOC Telework Accommodations
Another recent training addressed an emerging pattern: federal employees with approved reasonable accommodations for telework are being told those accommodations will be revoked. Rise Up convened a panel of our expert attorneys, Mary Kuntz, Heidi Burakiewicz, and Kelsey Speyer, to address the legal framework governing these situations.
Recording available here. Passcode: ^!$1lpbk
Federal employees whose request for a reasonable accommodation for telework was not granted are asked to complete this failure-to-accommodate survey.
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The coming weeks will be consequential. Schedule P/C conversions are scheduled to begin, OPM's proposed rules consolidating appeal rights remain pending, and the D.C. Circuit's decision in the CFPB case could reshape the legal framework for mass RIFs across the government. We will continue tracking these developments and reporting as they unfold.
In Solidarity,
Suzanne Summerlin
General Counsel Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network
