08/18/2026
Deep Dive
Trump Defangs Independent Watchdog of Civil Service Disputes
Aug. 17, 2026, 5:00 AM EDT, Ian Kullgren, Senior Reporter [Reprinted from Bloomberg Law News, Daily Labor Report]
For nearly half a century, the Merit Systems Protection Board has existed to shield civil servants from political reprisal.
But over the past several months, the Trump administration has eroded the panel’s authority in a series of steps that some former officials say have left the board a shell of the institution it once was.
Technical changes, legal theories recast along ideological lines, and conservative-leaning court decisions have moved some of the MSPB’s core responsibilities to other agencies or hollowed them out altogether. The changes are part of a wider overhaul that the Trump administration says will improve efficiency, but one that critics say leaves workers without an independent panel to adjudicate allegations of wrongdoing.
“They’re taking the power that the MSPB has in determining federal employment, and they’re making federal employment, really, on an at-will basis,” said Michael Fallings, a partner at law firm Tully Rinckey, who specializes in federal employment. “If this continues, the MSPB will cease to function.”
Rules set to take effect next month will strip appeals from the MSPB and hand them to the Office of Personnel Management, an arm of the executive branch headed by a business partner of Trump mega-donor Marc Andreessen. The MSPB quietly scrubbed the word “independent” from its website—a reflection of a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that gave Trump broad authority to fire members of quasi-judicial boards. Efforts by the White House to reclassify thousands of workers could further limit the board’s involvement.
In the upcoming changes, the personnel office will wrest control of appeals over certain probationary employee terminations, suitability for federal service, and reduction-in-force layoffs. While the MSPB will continue to oversee other types of appeals, such as whistleblower retaliation and poor-performance discipline, skeptics say neither agency will fulfill the role of an independent auditor of the executive branch.
The OPM rules also prevent workers from appealing decisions to federal court — a right granted by law under the MSPB system.
“It’s that classic the fox guarding the henhouse,” said Raymond Limon, a Biden appointee to the MSPB whose term expired last year. Congress was trying to get away from cronyism when it passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, “and now, we’re going back to it,” Limon added.
Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, during an interview in Washington on Aug. 11, 2025.
Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, during an interview in Washington on Aug. 11, 2025. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The administration has said the appeals updates will reduce wait times while preserving independent review, with separate staff handling determinations and appeals. Other recent shifts allow agencies to scrutinize workers through background checks after they’re hired, change the layoff queue to prioritize performance over seniority, and issue nondisclosure agreements.
“The system is much too complex, and it takes much too long to get anything done,” said Donald Devine, who served as OPM director during the Reagan administration. “Almost anything done to speed it up is a good thing.”
In a July Substack post, OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote that the MSPB serves “a legitimate and important function” and said the changes aren’t intended to undermine independent review.
Before joining the administration last year, Kupor served as a managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capital firms. Founder Marc Andreessen gave $2.5 million to Trump in 2024, and the firm has taken a major role in shaping artificial intelligence policy in Washington.
“I will say this plainly: if our internal process does not deliver genuine independence and a fair opportunity to be heard, it will fail—and deservedly so,” Kupor wrote. “We are committed to building something that works, not just something that is faster.”
Henry Kerner and James Woodruff, the two Republicans on the MSPB, declined to comment through a spokesman.
“As you know, the MSPB generally speaks through its decisions,” spokesman Zachary Kurz said in an email.
‘Chipped Away’
While the three-member panel, created in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is made up of political appointees, it operated for decades without interference from the White House. Since the enactment of the Civil Service Reform Act, members could only be removed for neglect and malfeasance.
That changed in February 2025, when Trump fired Cathy Harris, a Democratic appointee who chaired the MSPB, and removed other Democrats from similar boards. The terminations teed up a legal challenge in Trump v. Slaughter that culminated in the high court’s conservative majority extending Trump’s authority to fire executive branch appointees for any reason.
While there’s still some question around how the ruling affects the MSPB specifically, members nevertheless find themselves operating under the practical reality that they could be fired at any time.
“I don’t see how anybody can operate under those conditions without being influenced in some way, or at least the appearance of it,” Harris said in an interview. “I would have made decisions in the way that I thought was right, or, if I was put under pressure, I would have resigned rather than do what I was told.”
One scenario, Harris said, is that the board could continue to rule based on ever-expanding interpretations of the president’s authority to fire workers, effectively rendering the administration’s actions “untouchable.”
“Through different means, the prior jurisdiction of the MSPB is being chipped away,” she said. “Pretty soon you’re left with a block of melted ice.”
The MSPB appeared to bend quickly to the Slaughter decision. Before the June ruling, the board called itself an “independent, quasi-judicial agency” on its website, according to screenshots accessible through the Internet Archive. The word “independent” was removed sometime thereafter and was nowhere to be seen as of Friday.
“It’s bad, but it’s a recognition that it’s not the independent agency it used to be,” said James Eisenmann, who previously served as general counsel and executive director during the Obama and first Trump administrations. “It’s becoming an arm of the Department of Justice.”
Presidential Power
Seven months after Harris was fired, a memo from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel landed in MSPB inboxes. The language was legalistic, but the meaning was clear. Administrative judges, who serve as the front-line adjudicators of complaints to the board, were “empowered” going forward to consider Trump’s constitutional authority to fire members of the executive branch who “wield executive power on his behalf.”
This meant administrative judges were not to view cases exclusively through a statutory lens; they should also weigh Trump’s Article II powers, which many senior officials argue have few limits under the Unitary Executive Theory.
The Trump administration has also elevated the board’s role in civil servant disputes in federal court. Government attorneys frequently argue that workers are legally required to bring their complaints to administrative panels, often the MSPB and the Federal Labor Relations Authority, before they can reach court. Their argument would likely apply to OPM, too, once it takes over certain appeals.
One critical test case, Jackler v. MSPB, could expand the scope of the DOJ’s interpretation and the Supreme Court’s decision in Slaughter. It grapples with the independence of potentially thousands of front-line adjudicators and whether they qualify as “inferior officers” who can be fired at will.
In March, the Republican-controlled MSPB endorsed the administration’s view that it can fire immigration judges housed at the DOJ, saying it lacked jurisdiction to block the attorney general’s decision. The case is currently before the full US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
“Protection for those adjudicators is important for the system because people who appear before those adjudicators want to know they’re getting a fair hearing,” said Nathaniel Zelinsky, an attorney representing the immigration judges. “And if the federal government’s political actors intervene in their case, they want to see that intervention openly.”
In June, the White House launched a plan years in the making to reclassify thousands of government workers under a new, quasi-political designation known as Schedule Policy/Career. Rooted in Trump’s deep distrust of the “deep state” in the federal government, it applies to certain high-level career officials who could be fired without cause or due process.
Designees notably can’t challenge their reclassification before the MSPB.
