Two unions representing US government employees filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging President Trump’s efforts to reclassify up to 50,000 federal workers, making it easier to fire them. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), both federated unions under the AFL-CIO, represent more than 2 million government employees combined; AFGE alone represents nearly 800,000 federal civilian employees. They are suing the Trump administration following an executive order issued earlier this month which revived the “Schedule F” employee class.

Schedule F employees, now called “Schedule Career/Policy” employees, are career federal employees involved in policymaking. Under that classification, employees lose their employment and union protections, making them at-will employees. The unions filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia with help from Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal services organization focused on challenging executive branch corruption and anti-democratic movements. Their legal team argues that Trump illegally exceeded his presidential authority by rolling back Biden-era protections for civil servants.

Under President Biden, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued mandatory rules for moving positions “from the competitive service to the excepted service,” guaranteeing that moved employees would retain civil service protections. It also limited the types of positions that could be excluded from civil service protections due to their policymaking roles. The new executive order, however, instructs agencies and OPM to identify career civil servant positions of a policymaking character to be moved to a new schedule of excepted service and further instructs OPM to rescind the Biden-era rule.

The lawsuit asserts these instructions violate the procedures set out in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires agencies to publish “notice of proposed rule making” and provide “interested persons an opportunity to participate in the rule making” process because no such notice or participation period was provided before rescinding the rule created under Biden. Based on this violation, the unions asked that the enforcement of Schedule F be enjoined and the Biden-era rule remain operative until the provisions are rescinded in compliance with the notice-and-comment requirements of the APA.

Trump’s Schedule F order is among one of many efforts his administration has made in the past month to reduce the number of federal employees. His administration’s OPM has also offered all 2 million plus civilian employees deferred resignation. AFGE President Everett Kelley, responding to the resignation program, stated “[t]his offer should not be viewed as voluntary. Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”