As described yesterday in FPer Rebecca Pilar Buckwalter Poza’s diary “Trump’s rigging the immigration system via executive order,” the squatter in the Oval Office has issued an executive order that eliminates the competitive selection process meant to ensure competency:
President Donald Trump signed an executive order July 10 to except administrative law judges from the competitive service, meaning that agency leadership can appoint judges without competitive examination and selection procedures.
Administrative law judges are appointed in a variety of federal agencies to serve as impartial figures in formal proceedings requiring a decision on the record, such as in issues concerning environmental protection, immigration, labor management relations and more.
The EO also eliminates civil service protections for these judges, meaning that they can be terminated at will, thereby ensuring their compliance with the administration’s desired outcomes:
The order requires the Office of Personnel Management to list administrative law judges as a new Schedule E of the Excepted Service, and therefore not subject to Civil Service Rules and Regulations regarding removals from positions.
NPR interviewed two critics of the EO.
"The executive order takes a very modest decision from the Supreme Court last month, and basically runs with it to turn just about all administrative law judges within the executive branch from somewhat independent civil servants into politically appointed and politically removable bureaucrats who basically will have no one to answer to other than the administration officials who are responsible for their appointment," said Stephen Vladeck, an expert on administrative law at the University of Texas law school.
[...] "The real concern becomes that you're going to have administrative law judges in these agencies who are either there because they're deeply sympathetic to the regulated industries, or because they're deeply hostile to the regulated industries," said Vladeck. "Either way you lose the veneer of independent adjudication on which so much of the modern administrative state rests."
Caroline Frederickson, president of the American Constitution Society, agrees with those concerns and in a statement specifically pointed to possible repercussions with the Social Security Administration. "Administrative law judges handle Social Security disability cases. This administration is on record as wanting to lessen benefits. It's likely that a political ALJ appointed by this administration would rule against the beneficiaries and deny claims."
It’s not an assault on the Judiciary Branch, but it is an attack on the rule of law. Administrative law judges no longer need to be competent, but they must be compliant to the administration’s whims in order to keep their jobs. Just another step along the path toward fascism...