Trump Order Reclassifies Federal Legal Roles, Raising Job Security Concerns

President Donald Trump’s executive order reclassifying 8,000 federal employees includes hundreds of attorneys who advise the US government on matters ranging from patent law to assault investigations.

The move could reshape the senior ranks of the federal legal service by stripping affected attorneys of civil service protections and making them directly accountable to the President. Critics, including former government lawyers, argue that the constant risk of dismissal could deter frank legal advice, particularly where it conflicts with the administration’s policy positions.

The Trump administration says the measure targets only senior roles that shape policy. However, some attorneys who have held such positions dispute that characterisation.

“Civil servants have always been required to implement the policy goals of political leadership,” said Jenny Knopinski, a former attorney-adviser at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. But removing the right to appeal terminations, she added, “could certainly make people fearful” of disciplinary action.

More than 500 legal positions were reclassified by executive order on Wednesday, according to a White House appendix, though the classification method makes it difficult to determine the precise number of staff affected. Officials say almost all the roles are GS-15 level and above.

Many of the posts listed for reclassification to at-will employment carry the title “attorney adviser”. In some agencies, only one or two such roles were affected, while at the Federal Communications Commission nearly 100 positions were included.

At the Department of Justice, attorney advisers perform duties ranging from legal strategy to reviewing grant compliance, said Marnie Shiels, who served in the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women for more than two decades before retiring last year. Her work included contributing to the National Protocol for Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Examinations, a framework guiding practitioners in responding to survivors of sexual assault.

“The whole idea of the federal service is to have people who are experts in their field, who are dedicated to federal service and not party loyalists, not beholden to the political system,” Ms Shiels said, adding that the order could be “detrimental”.

At the Internal Revenue Service, attorney advisers to the commissioner can hold significant influence, lawyers said.

At the Executive Office for Immigration Review, attorney advisers assist judges in more than 70 immigration courts and at the Board of Immigration Appeals in interpreting and applying immigration law in cases involving undocumented migrants.

“Attorney advisers are a quintessential non-political position,” said Margy O’Herron, a senior Biden administration immigration policy adviser and former Board of Immigration Appeals attorney. “Stripping them of their civil service protections is an effort to intimidate them from objectively applying the law.”

The immigration review office under the second Trump administration has faced criticism from immigrant advocates, who say recent changes have made it harder for undocumented people to present their cases. These include increased case quotas for immigration judges and guidance suggesting newly appointed judges should deny asylum in most cases.

The order will also reclassify attorneys at civil rights agencies, including a dozen at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, covering supervisory investigators, programme analysts, budget officers and general attorneys.

“What I see in this is an administration that wants maximum flexibility to remove employees at will for political reasons, when it decides they are not doing what the administration wants,” said Jenny Mattingley, vice-president of public policy and stakeholder engagement at the Partnership for Public Service.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, described the order as a “restoration of the democratic process”, saying the reclassifications would be limited to senior career officials.

“This is really about ensuring that when the American people elect a president, whether President Trump or any future president, they can have confidence that the policy priorities and objectives of that administration are ultimately carried out,” he said.

 

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