Attorney General Ellison opposes opening the door to political purges
New Trump employment classification, Schedule F, would strip civil-service protections from tens of thousands of nonpartisan federal employees and risk eroding the effectiveness of the federal government
AG Ellison co-leads coalition in sending comment letter opposing unlawful, unconstitutional rule that would harm Minnesotans
May 23, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Today, Attorney General Ellison co-led a coalition of 19 attorneys general in submitting a comment letter that opposes the Office of Personnel Management’s proposed rule to create a new employment classification in the federal civil service, Schedule F. This classification, if implemented, would allow the Trump Administration to unilaterally strip critical workplace protections from tens of thousands of career federal employees, allowing Trump to fire them for purely political or ideological reasons unrelated to their job performance.
“This seemingly bureaucratic change will make it possible for Donald Trump to politically purge large swaths of the federal government workforce, including scientists, analysts, and regulators, and that is deeply troubling. A politicized civil service that sacrifices the public good for the president’s whims is bad for those people who will be fired for no reason other than their political beliefs and dangerous for every American,” said Attorney General Ellison. "Minnesotans depend on a federal government staffed with fair, nonpolitical subject-matter experts, not unqualified political cronies. We depend on a government that answers to us, not to the whims of one person. When disaster strikes, who would you want to respond: experts with a decade of experience, or people whose only qualifications are passing a loyalty test to Donald Trump? I oppose this change in the strongest possible terms and have rallied 18 other attorneys general from around the country to do the same.”
Under the current federal civil service system, approximately 2,000,000 federal employees serve in the “competitive service,” meaning they are hired through a merit-based process and protected by civil-service laws that guard against arbitrary dismissal or political interference. These federal employees are nonpartisan professionals hired for their expertise and expected to carry out the laws passed by Congress regardless of political shifts.
Schedule F is a new employment category that would reclassify a broad range of policy-related civil servants—such as analysts, attorneys, scientists, and regulators—into an at-will employment status. Unlike traditional Schedule C political appointees who change with each new presidential administration, Schedule F would apply to nonpartisan federal career staff not normally subject to such turnover. This reclassification would remove long-standing due process protections that guard the apolitical nature of the federal workforce and open these employees up to being fired on political grounds.
As of March 2024, there were only roughly 1,600 Schedule C employees across the entire federal government, which illustrates just how narrow Congress intended the exemptions from merit-based employment to be. When the first Trump administration attempted to implement Schedule F, one estimate projected it would reclassify as many as 50,000 federal employees.
In the comment, the attorneys general argue that the Trump Administration’s proposed rule is unlawful, unconstitutional, and harmful to states. Schedule F violates the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which Congress passed to protect federal employees from arbitrary dismissal and ensure merit-based hiring. It also raises due process concerns under the Fifth Amendment by retroactively stripping career civil servants of vested employment rights. From a policy standpoint, the rule would politicize the federal workforce, chill the independence of career professionals, make it more difficult to retain experienced employees, and open the door to partisan retaliation against public servants when their expertise conflicts with a presidential administration’s political agenda.
The attorneys general also emphasize the rule’s dangerous impact on states, including Minnesota, which depend on consistent, professional federal partners to administer shared programs. States rely on civil servants at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Education to implement laws, distribute funds, and provide technical guidance. This reclassification would also affect civil servants at agencies that states rely on to manage disasters, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The attorneys general further warn that the implementation of Schedule F could return key parts of the federal workforce to a spoils system that enables a president to reward loyalists with jobs, rather than allow federal agencies to hire based on merit. Politicizing these positions would undermine cooperation, destabilize federal-state programs like Medicaid and environmental enforcement, and significantly degrade the effectiveness of the federal government, as well as its adherence to the rule of law. The attorneys general warn in the comment that Schedule F would erode federal-state relations by effectively shifting regulatory and programmatic burdens onto the states and coercing state compliance with federal political priorities.
This letter was co-led by Attorneys General Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Anne E. Lopez of Hawaii. They were joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
