We have updates about abortion access, pay equity, fertility treatments for feds, the dreaded “Schedule F,” flexible work options, and a giant sex discrimination settlement at DEA.

Media coverage about federal employees’ abortion access

CNN first reported the letter we sent to Administration officials last month in a great article, and news about it has really spread. Since we sent the letter we’ve met with numerous reproductive rights organizations and other stakeholders, and we have a number of new projects in the works.

Meeting with DOJ Reproductive Rights Task Force

This is also big—right after we sent the letter, members of the DOJ’s Reproductive Rights Task Force asked for a meeting. We met with Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta and other high-level officials for almost an hour, where we presented the DOJ-specific requests we made in our letter and answered their questions (I’ve attached the PowerPoint we used so you can get a flavor of what we discussed). They seemed genuinely interested in our proposals; we’ll let you know which, if any, they decide to implement. A huge thanks to Jen Swedish and board member Colleen Phillips, who both took the lead on the presentation and crushed it. We haven’t heard from any of the Administration leaders outside of DOJ whom we contacted, and if we don’t get a response soon, we’ll reach out again.

New DOJ GEN abortion resources webpage

We briefly mentioned our new abortion webpage in the last update but want to highlight it again. The webpage includes a range of helpful resources, including information about how to access abortion care (both medication abortion and in-person care); hotline resources; abortion funds; and legal assistance. We want to thank DOJ GEN’s Abortion Advocacy Working Group for putting this together—in particular, Allena Martin, Amit Kumar, and Mary Mason.

Press coverage of DOJ GEN pay equity advocacy

The Federal News Network covered our effort to convince DOJ and OPM to stop using salary history during the hiring and pay-setting processes. We’re continuing our advocacy on this issue, and we’ll be in touch soon with updates. 

Fertility treatments for federal employees

Numerous congressional lawmakers recently urged OPM in a letter to provide federal employees with fertility treatment coverage, which we currently don’t have. The lawmakers wrote that “[p]roviding all federal government employees with access to [Artificial Reproductive Technology] treatment, irrespective of an infertility diagnosis, would make family-building more affordable and ensure the federal government remains a competitive employer.” The letter follows OPM’s statement last February that it is “interested in supporting family-building efforts for covered FEHB enrollees and their eligible family members.”

Fertility treatments, which can cost an absolute fortune, are out of reach for too many federal employees who can’t afford to pay for them out of pocket. DOJ GEN has a small working group that’s working on this issue; contact us if you’d like to join the effort.

The politicization of the civil service

Remember that awful Executive Order that former President Trump signed in late 2020 to overhaul the civil service system by stripping many feds of civil service protections? It created a new “Schedule F” designation for certain feds who could be fired at will. The designation is meant to ferret out the mythical “deep state,” including swaths of attorneys, those who work on policy matters, and many others (i.e., lots of us). President Biden rescinded the EO on January 21, 2022, but the idea behind it has come roaring back.

Axios and other news outlets have reported on back-room plans to eventually revive the policy. To prevent that from happening, the House introduced the Preventing a Patronage System Act that recently cleared the full House (a similar bill has been introduced in the Senate). Last week, our friends at the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys wrote a strong letter in favor of the bill, correctly noting that the legislation would “protect the apolitical and expertise driven administration of justice.” You can urge your legislators to support it by using this form that the National Treasury Employees Union created.

Flexible work options

Legislation that would encourage telework at federal agencies made it out of committee and is heading for a floor vote. The Telework Metrics and Cost Savings Act would develop standards for collecting data on telework, provide manager training, and require agencies to report on the cost savings that telework creates. You can contact your representative if you want to show your support.

OPM Director Kiran Ahuja testified before Congress that throughout the federal workforce, employees have been transferring to different agencies that offer greater flexible work options. If you know of instances where employees have left for a different DOJ component or another agency entirely for reasons involving flexible work options, let us know. Also, we continue to track components’ FWO policies (see a Bloomberg Law article about that effort here), so please update us if your component issues new policies.

Sex discrimination settlement at DEA

Last month, a group of former DEA agents received a $12 million settlement in class action lawsuit alleging systemic sex discrimination at the agency that they filed almost 30 years ago.  You can read about the settlement here.

We want to give a giant shout-out to our incredibly talented DOJ GEN board members Tricia Sindel and Amit Kumar, who put a huge amount of time into overhauling our website (check it out here!), revamping our social media presence, and designing a snazzy new logo (you’ll find it below and on the website).  DOJ GEN has never looked so good, and we can’t thank them enough.

As always, feel free to get in touch with questions or concerns, and please spread the word about DOJ GEN to your coworkers.