The Trump administration is seeking to make it harder for terminated federal employees to return by limiting their right to appeal layoffs to an independent board, according to a government plan released on Monday, according to Reuters.
“The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s HR office, has proposed ending the right of terminated federal employees to appeal their termination to the independent Merit Systems Protection Board,” the plan states.
Instead, laid-off workers would have to turn to OPM, an office whose director reports to US President Donald Trump.
The Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles disputes between federal employees and their agencies, has seen a spike in cases since Trump entered his second term.
According to government records, the number of board cases rose 266% between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025, compared with the same period a year earlier, Reuters reported.
If implemented, the proposal would follow Trump’s earlier efforts to shrink the size of the federal government. Trump has made mass layoffs of government employees a centerpiece of his second term, Reuters reported.
It also undermined opportunities for those same workers to challenge their layoffs, including firing members of government agencies that enforce job protections for federal employees.
The U.S. government will lay off 317,000 federal employees in 2025, OPM Director Scott Kupor said late last year. Kupor told Reuters that only a fraction of those who left were let go, with most choosing to accept a buyout or leave on their own.
(With inputs from Reuters)
