The Department of Education (ED) under the Biden administration used an obscure hiring gimmick to bring in nearly 200 attorneys while pushing radical policies that faced persistent legal opposition.
The Biden administration used the Schedule A hiring process, which provides an expedited path by bypassing the usual competitive process and negating the requirement that appointments be made based on merit. ED hired 193 attorneys from Jan. 20, 2021 through April 30, 2024 mostly staffing the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Schedule A positions are not required to be publicly posted, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The appointments through this system do not expire at the end of the president’s term.
“We uncovered other agencies during the Biden administration that used Schedule A hiring authority to staff the ranks of career officials outside the normal competitive process, often in politicized offices or offices working on highly contentious issues,” Michael Chamberlain, director of PPT, told the DCNF. “The Department of Education looks to have used this same authority to bulk up its Office for Civil Rights with career attorneys, stocking one of the most political offices in the department. OCR, by the way, worked on the administration’s massive (and unpopular) rewrite of Title IX regulations. It’s little wonder why the American public lost so much trust in its government during this time.”
While Schedule A is often used to hire employees with disabilities, the list supplied by ED excluded these hires at PPT’s request.
Several other department hires were also employed through the Schedule A process, including program specialists and administrative officers, the documents show.
Former President Joe Biden’s education department pushed several controversial policies, such as rewriting Title IX, a civil rights rule meant to protect women from discrimination, to include gender identity. The rule was challenged several times in courts before eventually being dropped and later blocked and vacated in a federal court.
Another education policy that met with legal friction was Biden’s attempt to forgive student loans. Numerous courts have struck down the administration’s plans to wipe away the debt of nearly 40 million Americans, including the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2023 that Biden’s use of executive power was unconstitutional. However, the former president found several loopholes to forgive billions in debt, such as for federal employees.
Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) previously used Schedule A to hire well over 100 immigration judges for its Immigration Review division just months before President Donald Trump assumed office.
ED did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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