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Shaun Southworth leading a federal employment training session with members of the Southworth PC team
 

Forced Agency Relocations: What the Law Requires When You Cannot Move

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Forced agency relocations are reaching federal employees at six or more agencies this summer, and NPR’s review of public records and internal communications this week describes a r...

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Senate Passes Its Own Funding Bill 89-4: What Changed, and What Didn’t

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Federal employees tracking government shutdown risk got a new data point Monday: the Senate voted 89-4 to advance its own stopgap funding bill, and it does not match the one the Ho...

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Ninety Seconds Before the Rules Change Again: A Monday Practice

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Federal employees are starting another week with headlines saying the rules changed again — and for a lot of people the shoulders are already up at the ears before the first cup of...

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TikTok Is Legal on Government Phones Again. Here's Why You Should Still Keep It Off Yours.

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The government just told federal employees they can download TikTok on a work phone again — and a federal employment attorney's advice is still to keep your thumb off that button. ...

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IRS Ordered to Restore Telework After Walking Out of Its Own Arbitration

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Federal employees at the IRS just won a major telework fight — and the agency didn't even show up to defend itself. An independent arbitrator ruled that the IRS violated its collec...

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What Federal Employees Still Legally Keep: Chapter 75, Whistleblower, and EEO Rights

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After a year of reclassifications, proposed rule changes, and reduction-in-force notices, it can feel like federal employees have lost every protection Congress ever gave them. Tha...

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Steady: A 90-Second Breathing Practice to Start Your Federal Work Week

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Workplace stress is not just an inconvenience for federal employees living through a year of hiring freezes, reorganizations, and reduction-in-force notices — it is a documented he...

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Government Shutdown Looming October 1: Three Moves for Federal Employees to Make Now

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A government shutdown could begin as soon as October 1, 2026, and federal employees who wait until the fiscal year ends to prepare may find themselves scrambling. Congress has pass...

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Your Agency's NDA Cannot Erase Your Whistleblower Rights

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A nondisclosure agreement cannot be used to block a federal employee from reporting wrongdoing — that protection comes from statute, not from whatever a form says, and it holds reg...

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Judge Orders DOJ to Restore Telework for Two Disabled EOIR Attorneys

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A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to restore full-time telework accommodations for two attorney-advisors in DOJ's Executive Office for Immigration Review, findi...

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GAO Clears DOGE at NLRB — But the Agency Deleted the Access Logs First

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A new Government Accountability Office report on DOGE's activity at the National Labor Relations Board reads, at first glance, like an all-clear. But a footnote buried in that same...

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State Department Is Hiring for Jobs It Just Cut — Know Your RIF Rights

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A year after the State Department separated roughly 1,350 employees in a reduction in force (RIF), the department is recruiting again for many of the same roles — and laid-off empl...

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About the people behind the work

Shaun Southworth & Lydia Taylor

Meet the federal employment attorneys behind this public-education work and the podcast Civil Rights for Civil Servants.

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