WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bloomberg Law) — Reinvigorated lawsuits from federal worker unions and advocates will face a series of hurdles in challenging a new regulation that makes it easier for the president to fire nonpolitical public employees.
Those groups immediately vowed to bring the Trump administration back to court after federal judges in Washington and Maryland stayed their earlier cases pending release of the final rule, which will reclassify tens of thousands of workers into a “policy/career” category that allows firing at will.
“We will return to court to stop this unlawful rule and will use every legal tool available to hold this administration accountable to the people,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.
Attorneys and scholars said overcoming questions of jurisdiction and standing may be more difficult now than last year, and the groups may have to wait until agencies actually begin re-classifying workers to retool their substantive arguments.
Democracy Forward represents the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which sued President Donald Trump last January to challenge the executive order that led to the final rule issued Thursday by the Office of Personnel Management. It’s one of at least three legal challenges that were filed before the rulemaking process began.
Plaintiffs are likely to amend those existing lawsuits with specific information from the final regulation, a union official told Bloomberg Law. The Government Accountability Project, which filed suit in February 2025 along with the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said it plans to amend its complaint this month.
“This is a deliberate attempt to do through regulation what the law does not allow—strip public servants of their rights and make it easier to fire them for political reasons and harm the American people through doing so,” Perryman said. “We have successfully fought this kind of power grab before, and we will fight this again.”
The National Treasury Employees Union also initiated legal proceedings last year on Trump’s inauguration day. NTEU Communications Director Mike Givens declined to comment on whether the union would continue its lawsuit, but said the union is reviewing the rule and its legal options.
Legal Arguments
Courts must first decide the threshold issue of whether they have the authority to hear and decide the cases. That subject matter jurisdiction analysis will include whether the disputes over worker reclassification constitute routine labor-management conflicts or structural challenges to executive authority.
A ruling on this issue will decide whether litigation can proceed quickly through the federal court system or more slowly through the administrative channels before an appealable decision can be reviewed by a court, said Anne Marie Lofaso, an employment and constitutional law professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
“The District of Maryland is going to understand very much and have sympathy for these federal employees,” Lofaso said. “There’s a good chance that they’ll take jurisdiction.”
Standing could also present an obstacle, as the government argued in previous filings that the unions and worker advocates are third-party bystanders to the federal employment relationship and couldn’t show the necessary harm to sue.
On the merits, the pre-existing challenges previously alleged the president’s executive order and OPM’s proposed rule would violate the Administrative Procedure Act and undercut the Civil Service Reform Act, which gives employment protections to career civil servants.
Dan Meyer, a federal employment partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, said the plaintiffs will likely have to wait until the administration begins re-classifying workers to launch claims under the CSRA.
“They’ll do it very quickly,” Meyer said. “We’re not going to be waiting around and so that will trigger the next sequence of litigation.”
