Federal employees terminated during probation have had no appeal at all since June 2025, and the rule that restores one allows three arguments
For more than a year, federal probationers have had no appeal at all.
An employee terminated during a probationary or trial period on or after 24 June 2025 has had no administrative route to contest the decision. Executive Order 14284 rendered the old procedures inoperative in April of that year, the Office of Personnel Management rescinded them in June, and nothing replaced them. On Friday morning OPM filed the final rule that puts a route back. It is narrow.
Three arguments are available and no others. Under the revised section 751.101(c) a covered employee may appeal on the ground that the action was based on partisan political reasons, or on the ground that it was based on marital status, or on the ground that the agency failed to follow the procedures that apply when a termination rests in whole or in part on conditions arising before the appointment. A claim of unlawful discrimination under the laws the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission administers can no longer be attached to the appeal, as it could before the executive order. OPM writes that those claims may still be pursued at the EEOC to the same extent as before.
The mechanics
Thirty calendar days to file, counted from the effective date of the action, with the deadline landing at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on the thirtieth day. Filing is electronic, and OPM will not accept documents by post or email unless it grants an exemption for good cause. The agency then has 30 calendar days after service to answer and to hand over the record supporting what it did. The employee carries the burden, by a preponderance of the evidence, on timeliness, on OPM's jurisdiction, and on whether the issue raised is one of the three.
There is no automatic hearing and no discovery. OPM says it will hold a hearing where the written record is insufficient or where credibility questions make one necessary and efficient, and that it may audit or investigate an agency's action to settle a material fact.
Commenters objected to precisely this. The rule records arguments that stripping out depositions, subpoenas and cross-examination leaves an appellant unable to prove a case, and that deciding on a record the agency assembles hands the agency the advantage. OPM answers that the rights preserved here are narrow regulatory rights rather than chapter 75 adverse actions, and declines to write in an automatic right to either.
Who decides
OPM adjudicates, through its Merit System Accountability and Compliance component, and the rule says the staff who decide must be insulated from the officials who acted. Appeals filed by OPM's own employees go to an administrative law judge instead. Either party may seek reconsideration within 30 calendar days, the Director may review before a decision becomes final, and final merits decisions are published. Where an appeal succeeds, the relief on offer includes correction of the personnel action, back pay, interest and reasonable attorney fees.
Six hundred and thirty-two comments arrived in a 30-day window, from serving and former civil servants, scientists, members of Congress, unions and federal agencies. OPM posted 618. Two were withheld for containing either threats to the President and members of the Administration or sensitive personal information, and the remaining twelve came from commenters who said their submission stood for a stated number of others.
Some of them, the rule records, argued that the point of the exercise is to obscure the probationary terminations carried out in 2025. On that the document is explicit in the other direction: covered actions effected before the effective date are not governed by the rule. Whatever it does, it does not reach backwards.
A second rule filed the same morning moves suitability action appeals away from the Merit Systems Protection Board and to OPM as well, under 5 CFR part 731. That one drew 343 comments.
