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A drafting error in August's layoff rule deleted the two paragraphs that say when a federal worker counts as 'displaced'. For 13 days the definition that governs their priority for other jobs had no criteria under it. OPM restored the text on September 15.

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OPM's reduction-in-force rule, effective September 2, carried an amendatory instruction that told the code to replace all of paragraph (1) of the definition of 'displaced' but supplied only its opening line. The effect was to delete the two subparagraphs that say who qualifies: an employee who got a RIF separation notice, or one facing removal for refusing a directed move out of their commuting area. That definition governs who gets priority consideration for other federal jobs under the career transition program. A correcting amendment published September 15 restored the text, effective immediately, and says it makes no substantive change. It does not say how the error was found, whether any case was decided under the truncated definition during the 13 days, or what happens if one was. Two other OPM rules landed the same week: shared hiring certificates, effective October 15 with comments to November 16, and a proposal on excepted-service employment, comments to November 17.

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Federal rules are edited by instruction. A rule does not print the new code; it tells the code what to change. On August 3, OPM's reduction-in-force rule carried instruction 11:

Amend Sec. 330.602 by revising paragraph (1) of the definition of displaced'' and paragraph (1) of the definition of surplus''.

It then supplied, for "displaced," only the opening clause, the one that ends in a colon. Everything that was supposed to come after the colon, the two subparagraphs that say who actually qualifies, was not in the instruction. So on September 2, when the rule took effect, those subparagraphs left the code.

What went missing

A "displaced" employee, under the career transition assistance program, is one who gets priority consideration for other federal jobs. The deleted subparagraphs are the test:

  • (i) an employee who received a reduction-in-force separation notice, and did not turn down a qualifying offer, or
  • (ii) an employee who received a notice of proposed removal for declining a directed relocation outside their local commuting area.

Without them, in OPM's words: "Without these paragraphs, the definition is incomplete."

The correction

The fix published on September 15 and took effect the same day, without notice or comment, under a good-cause finding. It restores both subparagraphs, word for word as they read before, and keeps the one change the August rule did intend: the opening clause now covers a "competitive service employee in the competitive service tenure group" rather than "career or career-conditional (tenure group I or II)."

OPM's account of the cause: "An amendatory instruction in the rule inadvertently resulted in the removal of two paragraphs from the definition of 'displaced'." And of its effect: "This document makes no substantive change to the regulations. It restores regulatory text that was in effect before September 2, 2026, that OPM did not propose to remove, and that the final rule did not discuss removing".

The parallel change to the definition of "surplus," OPM says, "was published as intended and is not affected by this correction."

What the correction leaves open

  • The 13 days. Between September 2 and September 15 the codified definition had no criteria under paragraph (1). The correction does not say whether any agency applied it, whether any priority determination was made in that window, or what would happen to one that was.
  • How it was caught. No inquiry, report or review is named.
  • Whether the rest was checked. OPM says the "surplus" revision was correct. It does not say whether other instructions in the same rule were re-examined.

The August rule this corrects is not minor: it rewrote federal layoff rules across seven parts of the code to put performance ahead of tenure and length of service in deciding who is retained.

Two more OPM rules the same week

  • Shared certificates and pooled hiring (September 15, effective October 15, comments due November 16, docket OPM-2017-0004). One agency's list of qualified candidates can now be shared with several agencies at once, and a receiving agency may rely on the first agency's decision to pass over a veteran rather than making its own. OPM puts first-year costs at about $4.8 million across more than 80 agencies, and says a separate goal in guidance, not in the rule, is for at least 60 percent of external competitive-service hires in fiscal 2027 to come from shared certificates. The rule gives no count of how many certificates have been shared since 2017.
  • Employment in the excepted service (September 18, proposed, comments due November 17, docket OPM-2026-0166). It rewrites how excepted-service jobs are filled and adds rules for the newer hiring schedules. Comment through regulations.gov under that docket number; the Federal Register's own comment link for this document points at OPM's generic catch-all docket instead.

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