Prohibited Personnel Practices
Prohibited Personnel Practices: A Broader Category Than You Might Expect
The 14 Categories
1. Discrimination, including on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability — but also, distinctively, marital status and political affiliation, categories that generally have no private-sector federal equivalent.
2. Soliciting or considering improper recommendations, such as a recommendation about a candidate that isn’t based on personal knowledge or records.
3. Coercing political activity, or retaliating against an employee for refusing to engage in political activity.
4. Deceiving or obstructing any individual with respect to their right to compete for federal employment.
5. Influencing someone to withdraw from competition in order to improve or injure another individual’s employment prospects.
6. Granting an unauthorized preference or advantage to improve or injure a particular person’s employment prospects.
7. Nepotism — advocating for the appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement of a relative.
8. Retaliation for whistleblowing, meaning reprisal against an employee for a protected disclosure of wrongdoing.
9. Retaliation for exercising other protected rights, including filing an appeal, complaint, or grievance; testifying or assisting someone else in doing so; cooperating with an Inspector General or the OSC; or refusing to obey an order that would require violating the law.
10. Discriminating based on conduct that doesn’t affect job performance, meaning off-duty conduct that has no genuine bearing on the employee’s work.
11. Violating veterans’ preference requirements in hiring or other personnel decisions.
12. Taking a personnel action that violates a law, rule, or regulation implementing the merit system principles — a broader, catch-all category tied to those foundational principles.
13. Enforcing a noncompliant nondisclosure policy, form, or agreement, meaning one that fails to include the specific statutory language preserving an employee’s whistleblowing rights.
14. Accessing someone’s medical records as part of, or to further, another prohibited personnel practice.
How This Overlaps — and Doesn't Overlap — With Other Federal Employment Claims
Two of these categories deserve special attention because they don’t fit neatly into either the EEO discrimination process or the whistleblower framework covered elsewhere on this site: marital status and political affiliation discrimination, both part of category 1. These claims are enforced specifically through OSC and the MSPB, not through the EEO complaint process. See our marital status discrimination and political affiliation discrimination pages for how these specific protections work.
Category 8 (whistleblower retaliation) and category 9 (retaliation for other protected activity) overlap significantly with the Whistleblower Protection Act framework described on our federal whistleblower protection page, though a prohibited personnel practice complaint can also stand on its own, separate from a whistleblower-specific claim.
How a Prohibited Personnel Practice Claim Actually Proceeds
There are generally two distinct paths, and which one applies to your situation depends on whether the underlying personnel action is independently appealable to the MSPB:
- A standalone OSC complaint. If the personnel action isn’t independently appealable to the MSPB (or you’re not otherwise pursuing a direct appeal), you can file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, which has investigative and prosecutorial authority over all 14 categories. If OSC substantiates your complaint, it can seek corrective action, disciplinary action against the responsible official, or both — negotiating with your agency directly, or petitioning the MSPB if the agency won’t cooperate.
- An affirmative defense within an MSPB appeal. If you’re separately appealing a major adverse action — removal, a lengthy suspension, a demotion, or a furlough — you can raise a prohibited personnel practice as an affirmative defense within that same appeal, arguing that the agency’s stated justification was pretextual and the real motivating factor was one of the 14 prohibited categories. See our MSPB adverse action appeals page for that separate process.
A Genuine Limitation Worth Understanding
Not every prohibited personnel practice leads to the same remedy. For most categories, OSC can seek both corrective action (making you whole) and disciplinary action against the responsible official. But for violations of veterans’ preference requirements specifically, OSC’s authority to seek corrective action is more limited for violations occurring on or after a certain date — corrective action for veterans’ preference violations is instead generally provided through a separate process under the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act, discussed further on our Federal Sector Employment Law overview.
Talk to a Prohibited Personnel Practices Attorney
If you believe you’ve experienced conduct that falls into one of these 14 categories — even if it doesn’t fit neatly into a discrimination or whistleblower claim — it’s worth having your situation evaluated. Wilkenfeld Law Office can help you understand whether you have a viable complaint and which process applies to you.
Or call 301.245.3035 · Intake@WilkenfeldLO.com