By Courtney Rozen
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will have more power to hire and fire up to 50,000 career federal employees in an overhaul of the government's civil service system announced by his administration on Thursday.
The overhaul, released by the Office of Personnel Management, fulfills Trump's campaign pledge to strip job protections from federal workers deemed by the president's team to be "influencing" government policy.
It is the biggest change to the rules governing the civil service in more than a century and targets employees that the administration sees as undermining the president's priorities. Trump called the overhaul "Schedule F" during his first administration.
"You can't run an organization if people are refusing to actually carry out the lawful objectives and orders of the administration," said OPM Director Scott Kupor, the administration's top HR official.
The rule will be scrutinized by a federal judge.
Federal worker unions and their allies sued in January to stop the policy before it was fully developed. Federal judges paused the litigation while the Trump administration finalized changes. A court challenge will resume in the coming days, said Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, one of the groups behind the lawsuit.
"We will return to court to stop this unlawful rule and will use every legal tool available to hold this administration accountable," she said in a statement.
Trump will have the power to select which government positions will lose their job protections, according to the policy the Trump administration released on Thursday.
CHANGES TO WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTIONS
The Trump administration is also changing how long-standing legal protections that prohibit U.S. government agencies from retaliating against whistleblowers will be enforced, the OPM statement said.
Federal agencies will be in charge of setting up job protections for their own employees who accuse them of wrongdoing, such as violating the law or wasting money. That would be a change from the past, when an independent office known as the Office of the Special Counsel was charged with protecting whistleblowers from reprisal.
The Trump administration will require agency officials be "unbiased" when investigating accusations from whistleblowers that their employer retaliated against them, an OPM official told reporters on Thursday morning.
Reuters previously reported that the Trump administration was close to making this change.
(Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Deepa Babington and Nia Williams)
