Reinstate Schedule F (Executive Order 13957)

Research notes

• Litigation is pending but, as far as allowlisted sources show, nothing is enjoined. The CourtListener docket for NTEU v. OPM, D.D.C. 1:25-cv-03948 (filed 2025-11-14), is at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71913415/national-treasury-employees-union-v-office-of-personnel-management/ — recorded as a lead, not Evidence, because the docket entries could not be read. The CourtListener bulk snapshot of 2026-06-30 lists the case as still open (no termination date). The CRS legal sidebar LSB11412, “Schedule Policy/Career: 2026 Final Rule, Legal Challenges, and Issues for Lawmakers” (congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11412), could not be read and is likewise a lead.
• The Mandate’s Chapter 3 caveat — “SES responsibility should come first” — is a sequencing preference, not a separate ask, and was not tracked.
• Reviewed 2026-09-24: OPM is writing Schedule Policy/Career into the rest of its excepted-service regulations. A proposed rule of 2026-09-18, Employment in the Excepted Service (docket OPM-2026-0166, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/18/2026-19222/employment-in-the-excepted-service), would “conform OPM regulations to current excepted-service schedules, including Schedules E, Policy/Career, and G”, modernize the 5 CFR part 302 procedures “while preserving veterans’ preference, compensable-injury restoration rights, and other priority placement rights”, and “authorize and clarify Pathways conversions to Schedule Policy/Career”. The Status does not move: this item is already done on EO 14410’s first placements, and a proposal cannot add to that. It is recorded because it is the schedule’s consolidation into the ordinary body of hiring regulation, which is where a later reversal would have to be undone, and because it writes the Pathways conversion route into regulation — proposed 5 CFR 362.107 would let an eligible Pathways Participant be converted noncompetitively to a permanent Schedule Policy/Career appointment with no trial period. The route itself is not new: EO 14410 (2026-06-03) had already amended EO 13562 to let Pathways career appointments include Schedule Policy/Career positions, and the proposal says it is conforming the regulations to that order. RIN 3206-AO92; comments due 2026-11-17. A first reading from the Federal Register abstract alone was checked against the full text, read on govinfo.gov, which corrected that reading’s claim that the conversion route was new.