Civil Service Reform Act of 1978

Uh, there are legal challenges absolutely, but those, there's no any, any sort of preliminary injunction or any sort of court order that's stopping this from taking place, at least at the moment.

Uh, but there is a lawsuit that comes from federal unions and led by the American Federation of Government Employees, and they're suing over this new performance management system, saying that it violates the Civil Service Reform Act, and that OPM doesn't have statutory authority to make, uh, such significant changes to that process.

They're worried, uh, also about just the use of what's called a forced distribution system, where you're capping how many employees can receive those high performance ratings.

Uh, so, you know, I think there are a lot of concerns.

The, but the, so the way it works, you can sue into the First Amendment.

You just, it's technically because you're a federal employee, it's brought under the Civil Service Reform Act.

and you have protection under the you have to go to the administrative process typically the merit service protection board the and then you can sue for back pay and things like that so not like traditional damages but more just back pay uh you can argue sometimes for reinstatement and then plus uh any benefits that were lost but it was clear that what patel did was to punish him for his speech criticizing amongst other things the way this case was being handled, which was within his.

He did so while he was not in FBI where he wasn't assigned.

You think he's got a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding on this?

Well, yeah, I mean, he's got a basic First Amendment violation case.

It's all the procedural and technical rules you have to follow if you're a federal employee in terms of going through the Merit Service Protection Board, typically, and the Civil Service Reform Act and all those things.

But it was clear Patel did what he did.