Brought to you by Southworth PC—Attorneys for Federal Employees

Our online community now tops 150,000 federal workers and supporters across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Each briefing distills the day’s most consequential developments, adds clear-eyed legal analysis, and pairs it with mindfulness tools that keep you steady no matter how turbulent the news cycle becomes. If this newsletter helps you stay informed, please pass it on: https://fedlegalhelp.com/newsletter. Your advocacy broadens the protective circle for every federal employee.

📬 A Personal Note from Shaun Southworth

As many of you know, I’ve made it my mission to show up every day for federal employees — breaking down legal updates, protecting your rights, and helping you navigate a system that’s constantly shifting. But I don’t do this alone.

I’m proud to introduce my co-leader in this work: Lydia Taylor, managing partner of Southworth PC and co-owner. With over 20 years of HR and legal experience — including leading a large public HR department — Lydia is one of the most emotionally intelligent leaders I know. She’s also been a driving force behind the inclusive, diverse, and equitable culture we’ve built at our firm, including our support for remote work done right.

While I’ll continue to lead on daily updates and strategy, we’ve created an intentional space for Lydia to share her own insights — particularly around how current federal policies are impacting Black professionals and other communities often left out of the conversation. She won’t post as often given how we split our roles to help federal employees (but like everything this could change), but when she does, her voice will be sharp, grounded, and essential. And, just like I speak on mindfulness, she is going to bring some light to issues that are important to her communities, while being a strong advocate for all federal employees.

If you are interested, please help us push back on the anticipated anti-federal employee noise by following Lydia on TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram before the trolls arrive at:
👉 fedlegalhelp.com/lydia

Lydia and I speak differently — by design and by being our authentic selves— but we’re aligned in our shared mission: to protect and empower federal employees across this country.

Thanks for being part of it,
— Shaun

Top Three News Stories:

1. Supreme Court Asked to Lift the Injunction on Government-Wide RIFs

The Solicitor General filed an emergency application urging Justice Kagan to stay Judge Illston’s nationwide ban on agency-wide reductions-in-force (RIFs) while the Ninth Circuit appeal continues.  The brief calls the injunction an “unprecedented judicial takeover” of the President’s Article II authority and claims that keeping surplus employees on the payroll is costing agencies millions of dollars a day.  Justice Kagan set an abbreviated briefing schedule that could produce a Supreme Court order as early as next week. Unions representing nearly a million federal workers vowed to resist, warning that abrupt layoffs would “gut critical public services.”  SCOTUS Blog

Legal Insight:

From a practitioner’s standpoint, the immediate question is timing rather than merits.  Under 5 C.F.R. § 1201.22(b) the Merit Systems Protection Board appeal clock in a RIF case does not start until the action is effective (or until the employee receives the agency’s final decision, whichever is later), so the filing window will still be 30 days even if pink-slip notices go out again.  The strategic concern is procedural: agencies may try to set unusually short effective dates if the stay is granted.  Counsel should therefore watch for accelerated effective-date language and be prepared to request interim relief—such as temporary reinstatement—if an agency races to implement a RIF before the Supreme Court rules on the merits.  Finally, because a Supreme Court stay would not decide the legality of the underlying executive order, preserving constitutional and statutory arguments in any MSPB filing remains essential. 

2. OPM Floats “Five-Day” Suitability-Removal Rule

OPM published a notice of proposed rulemaking aimed at giving agencies only five workdays to remove employees found “unsuitable” or “unfit.”  The proposal would apply to post-appointment misconduct as well as false statements during hiring and certain off-duty actions deemed inconsistent with the “public trust.”  OPM argues the tighter timeline will “restore confidence” in the civil service and reduce mission risk; stakeholders have 30 days to submit comments. Federal News Network

Legal Insight:

The rule would compress due-process rights well below the 30-day response period that 5 U.S.C. § 7513 ordinarily guarantees for adverse actions, raising both statutory-conflict and Fifth-Amendment questions.  If finalized as written, an employee could be escorted out within a week—before gathering rebuttal evidence or securing counsel.  Request the complete investigative file immediately upon receiving a suitability notice and to invoke the Douglas factors in any reply to preserve arguments for proportionality if possible.  Comment letters can legitimately question whether the regulation would survive Ward v. MSPB–style procedural-harm analysis and whether it risks disparate impact on probationers, veterans’-preference eligibles, and employees with pending EEO matters. 

3. Merit Hiring Plan Draws Fire for Potential “Loyalty Test”

OPM’s newly released Merit Hiring Plan includes an optional interview prompt asking finalists to name their favorite Trump-era policy initiative. The plan also calls for phasing out degree requirements in favor of standardized skills assessments and for steering recruiting toward “patriotic” candidates.  Critics—from House Oversight Democrats to former CHCOs—argue the prompt amounts to a de facto political litmus test that could chill speech and politicize career hiring.  Agencies must submit implementation road-maps within 60 days. Goverment Executive

Legal Insight:

Competitive-service selections must be free from partisan considerations under the Civil Service Reform Act and the Hatch Act.  Requiring—or even appearing to require—ideological alignment could trigger viewpoint-discrimination claims and OSC complaints.  Agencies would be prudent to treat any “favorite policy” question as strictly voluntary, document its non-use in ranking, and preserve validation studies for any new assessment tools.  Applicants who believe they were screened out for political reasons should keep contemporaneous notes of the exchange and request the panel’s rating sheets via the Privacy Act; that paper trail is often the deciding factor in subsequent OSC or MSPB proceedings.  Until a court weighs in, conservative practice for both sides is to separate merit factors (KSAs, prior performance) from any expression of political preference

Mindful Moment of the Day: 

"Walk-the-Block" Microbreaks