Biden’s Hiring Rules Illegally Exclude Conservatives from Being Hired for Federal Jobs

The new hiring rules proposed by the Biden administration are written to exclude applicants with conservative views, a report says.

The Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department of the federal government, proposed amendments Jan. 31 in the Federal Register to the “personnel vetting investigative and adjudicative processes for determining suitability and fitness” for government employment (88 FR 6192), Hans von Spakovsky wrote this week.

The problem is that the rules are so vague that they can be used by biased activists to exclude people whose political opinions they don’t like.

Per Von Spakovsky:

As the proposal explains, the term “suitability and fitness” refers to “a decision by an agency that an individual does or does not have the required level of character and conduct necessary” to work in a federal agency. This assessment has nothing to do with someone’s qualifications for a job and everything to do with a subjective assessment of a prospective employee.

Under the current regulation, 731.202(b)(7), an applicant is disqualified from employment by the federal government for “knowing and willful engagement in acts or activities designed to overthrow the U.S. Government.”

Certainly, no one disagrees with that standard, since no one should be a federal employee who has engaged in such behavior. It’s a standard question that background investigators ask a prospective employee’s listed references.

The Biden administration, however, is proposing to replace that straightforward standard with four enigmatic standards:

• Knowing engagement in acts or activities with the purpose of overthrowing Federal, State, local, or tribal government.
• Acts of force, violence, intimidation, or coercion with the purpose of denying others the free exercise of their rights under the U.S. Constitution or any state constitution.
• Attempting to indoctrinate others or to incite them to action in furtherance of illegal acts.
• Active membership or leadership in a group with knowledge of its unlawful aims, or participation in such a group with specific intent to further its unlawful aims.

Von Spakovsky added, “The first standard above is similar to the current standard. It is not controversial. But the problem with the other three proposed standards is that they are so broad and so vague—“nuanced,” in the words of OPM’s proposal—that they will give ideologues who predominate the civil service’s ranks the ability to reject almost anyone who is critical of government policies.”

Of course it is.

It is just another example of fascist Democrats using the iron boot of government to criminalize Conservatism and to cast conservatives out of society.

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