Trump Administration Hit With Another Lawsuit Over Schedule F Order

Another organization filed a lawsuit to block President Donald Trump’s executive order that strips employment protections for tens of thousands of federal workers — otherwise known as Schedule F. On Tuesday, Democracy Forward and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) — a non-profit organization that helps federal employees anonymously expose environmental waste and wrongdoing — sued the Trump administration over Schedule F, accusing the administration of violating the Administrative Procedures Act.
Schedule F reclassifies the employment status of tens of thousands of civil service employees, essentially putting them in a less-protected employment class that makes it harder for them to receive promotions based on merit, and easier to dismiss them for political disloyalty. It’s not the first time Trump tried to implement Schedule F: he signed it as an executive order at the tail end of his first presidency, but since he lost the 2020 election, it was never formally implemented.
Reimplementing Schedule F was part of a larger EO that impacts the federal workforce that Trump signed on the first day of his second presidency. The EO also included a hiring freeze, a 5-days-a-week return to office mandate and changes in hiring practices.
According to PEER’s lawsuit, Schedule F violates the Fifth Amendment because it strips civil servants of their accrued status and civil service protections without due process of law. It also claims that the EO “instructs agencies to act in a way that violates the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The reimplementation of Schedule F has made reverberations throughout the federal workforce since Trump signed the EO on Jan. 21. Shortly after Trump signed the EO, the National Treasury Employees Union — a government union that represents workers from 37 federal agencies — filed a lawsuit to reverse the order, claiming that it is “contrary to congressional intent.”
Though PEER isn’t a union representing federal workers, one of its primary functions is to help and protect federal workers who report environmental waste and wrongdoing. PEER says in the the lawsuit that Trump’s EO has “already impeded” the organization’s “ability to fulfill its mission,” because “several of PEER’s clients and potential clients have already indicated that they are reluctant to speak to the media or to make confidential whistleblower reports due to fear of retaliation given renewed Schedule F.”
In one example, an individual who previously came to PEER as a potential whistleblower prior to Trump’s EO “was afraid to give even their name and hesitant to give any information because they feared summary termination due to the Executive Order.”