Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek moved to strip thousands of government workers of their civil service protections, leaving career Social Security Administration workers vulnerable to termination.
In an April 7 internal memo, Dudek instructed staff to begin reclassifying SSA employees as Schedule F political appointees, a designation for policy-making roles that redefines workers as at-will employees, who can be fired without "lengthy procedural hurtles."
"For SSA, policy-making positions encompass a wide range of responsibilities," Dudek wrote, instructing sweeping reclassification of leadership, management and oversight roles in a memo obtained by Government Executive. "Individuals in these roles often develop and implement both formal rules and informal policies, interpret and apply laws, and influence how SSA operates."
Critics argue the reclassifications distort the legal intent of Schedule F, which was initially created to target high-level policy-making roles.
"If this email constitutes SSA's full decision, then the agency has contorted the term 'policy-influencing' beyond all recognition," said Rich Couture, a spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). "The employees are not policy-makers."
AFGE has filed litigation to challenge the reclassifications, asserting that the majority of affected workers are simply carrying out agency policy—not creating it.
Kathleen Romig of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities echoed claims that Schedule F is not a suitable classification for such a wide range of SSA employees.
"Looking at some roles specifically, in communications, it's people writing pamphlets—they're not policy-influencing," she explained. "At the Office of HR...that's not policy-influencing, they're just signing employees up for benefits, hiring and running security clearances."
SSA researchers are being targeted as well. "How many people are getting benefits each month and for how much...this stuff is just the facts," she continued. "That's not policy-influencing, it's just describing what the agency is doing and where our tax dollars are going."
"The idea that all of the people who work in each one of those components and subcomponents are somehow policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating is just absurd," Romig emphasized.
Dudek ordered the changes be completed in "the next 90 days."
The reclassification comes amid the Trump administration's push to reshape and reduce the federal workforce through DOGE and a torrent of executive orders. While Trump has promised SSA benefits won't be affected, Musk has called the program "a Ponzi scheme" and procedural changes have already impacted services.
The latest pending litigation from AFGE adds to mounting legal challenges to the Trump administration's aggressive policy changes.
"This is a massive overreach by the Agency," an AFGE representative wrote to union members in an email reviewed by The Bulwark. "In the meantime, employees should continue to do great work on behalf of the American people, as they have been."
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