The 14 Prohibited Personnel Practices: What Federal Managers Can’t Legally Do to You

You raised a safety concern to your agency’s inspector general. Two weeks later, your supervisor pulled you off your normal assignment, buried you in undesirable duties, or rewrote your last performance review. That timing is likely not a coincidence.

Federal law lists exactly 14 actions a manager, supervisor, or agency official cannot take against you. These actions are known as prohibited personnel practices (PPP) under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b).

Capovilla & Williams represents federal employees nationwide and helps them protect their rights. If your agency crossed a line, Capovilla & Williams can tell you which one and what your options may be.

Key Takeaways

• Federal law bans 14 specific actions under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b). Discrimination and retaliation account for many of the complaints the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) investigates each year.
• The Office of Special Counsel, not your agency’s own Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office, is generally the place to report most non-discrimination PPPs.
• You typically have a set window to act after the personnel action occurred or after you knew about it.
• A single PPP finding can undo an agency’s entire disciplinary case, even one that looks well documented on paper.
• Filing a PPP complaint is itself protected activity, and retaliating against you for filing one is its own separate violation.

If any of this sounds like what’s happening to you, talk to a prohibited personnel practices attorney before you respond to your agency. What you say next can become evidence.

What Makes an Action a Prohibited Personnel Practice

An action becomes a prohibited personnel practice when someone with the authority to hire, fire, promote, discipline, or otherwise affect your job takes, threatens, or recommends that action for one of 14 banned reasons. The authority matters as much as the motive. A coworker who spreads a rumor about you has done something petty, but a coworker with no personnel authority hasn’t committed a PPP, no matter how unfair the comment feels.

The 14 practices trace back to the Civil Service Reform Act and later amendments, most recently the Dr. Chris Kirkpatrick Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017, which added the medical records provision below. Congress built the list to protect what it calls merit system principles, the idea that federal jobs, promotions, and discipline should run on performance and law, not politics, favoritism, or payback.

The 14 Prohibited Personnel Practices

Here is a quick summary of the full list, in the order Congress wrote it into 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b):

1. Discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, or political affiliation.
2. Soliciting or considering a personnel recommendation that isn’t based on the personal knowledge or records of the person furnishing it.
3. Coercing your political activity or punishing you for refusing to engage in it.
4. Deceiving or obstructing anyone’s right to compete for a federal job.
5. Influencing an applicant to withdraw from a job competition to help or hurt someone else’s chances.
6. Granting an unauthorized advantage to improve or injure anyone’s employment prospects.
7. Engaging in nepotism, meaning hiring, promoting, or advocating for a relative.
8. Retaliating against you for whistleblowing on a violation of law, rule, or regulation, gross waste, fraud, abuse, or danger to public safety.
9. Retaliating because you filed a complaint or grievance, testified in someone else’s complaint, or refused an unlawful order.
10. Discriminating against you for off-duty conduct unrelated to how you do your job.
11. Violating a veterans’ preference requirement in hiring or promotion.
12. Taking or withholding a personnel action in a way that violates any law or rule protecting the merit system.
13. Enforcing a nondisclosure agreement that doesn’t tell you your whistleblower rights still apply.
14. Accessing your medical records to help commit any of the 13 practices above.

Number 14 almost never shows up alone, since it exists to prove one of the others.

Discrimination and Retaliation Top the List of OSC Complaints

Whistleblower retaliation and the broader “other retaliation” category make up the majority of what OSC investigates in a given year, and the pattern is often the same. An employee reports something, a supervisor finds out, and within weeks the employee’s schedule changes, their performance rating drops, or they’re pulled into a fact-finding investigation that never seems to go anywhere except toward their file. Proving that pattern is harder than it sounds, because the agency rarely writes down the real reason. Instead, you get a memo about “performance concerns” that appeared the same month you talked to an inspector general, and the timing has to do the talking your supervisor won’t.

Discrimination claims tied to race, sex, national origin, age, and disability usually go to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC’s) complaint process instead of OSC, since the two agencies signed a memorandum of understanding in 2014 to avoid duplicate investigations. There are some limited exceptions to this based on case law, which is another reason it’s important to talk to a qualified federal employment lawyer. Marital status and political affiliation discrimination stay with OSC, because no other agency has jurisdiction over them.

How OSC Investigates and What Happens Next

The Office of Special Counsel is an independent federal agency, not part of your employer’s chain of command, and it can investigate and prosecute PPP claims on its own.

Filing a Complaint

Filing a complaint starts the process. You, or an attorney on your behalf, can file a complaint with OSC electronically. Deadlines vary by claim type. Missing the window can end your case before OSC reviews the facts.

Corrective and Disciplinary Action

If OSC substantiates your complaint, it can seek corrective action, meaning your agency has to undo the harm, reinstate your position, or adjust your pay. Separately, OSC can pursue disciplinary action against the individual official who committed the violation, and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) can order penalties ranging from a reprimand to removal and up to five years of debarment from federal employment.

Why Contact a Federal Employment Lawyer

Winning a PPP claim means proving intent and causation inside an agency that controls almost all the relevant records. You’re also up against a lawyer whose only job is defending the personnel action you’re challenging.

Christopher Jones leads our federal employment team. He has two decades of experience in military and federal employment law, and he has overseen employee discipline and EEOC investigations for the Air Force, U.S. Central Command, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, before he started representing employees.

If your agency took an action against you that doesn’t add up, get the facts reviewed before you sign anything or miss a filing deadline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my agency fire me for filing an OSC complaint?

No, and retaliating against you for filing is itself a separate violation under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(9). If your agency takes any action against you because you filed, testified, or cooperated with an OSC investigation, that’s its own prohibited personnel practice. Document the timeline closely, since retaliation cases depend on when things happened.

What’s the difference between an OSC complaint and an MSPB appeal?

An OSC complaint asks the Office of Special Counsel to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute the violation on your behalf. An MSPB appeal is something you file yourself when your agency has already taken an “otherwise appealable action” against you, like a removal or suspension, and you’re raising the PPP as a defense. Some employees end up using both, depending on what happened and when.

Do I need a lawyer to file with OSC?

You don’t need one to file, but employees who go it alone often underestimate how much the agency’s attorney already knows about the process. You deserve to know what you are up against and how to protect your legal rights. Get this information from an experienced federal employment lawyer before you commit to a filing strategy that’s hard to walk back.

What happens to the supervisor if OSC finds a violation?

If OSC substantiates the complaint, it can seek disciplinary action against the individual who committed it, not just a policy fix for you. The Merit Systems Protection Board can order penalties ranging from a reprimand to removal, plus up to five years of debarment from federal employment. For the worst violations, like whistleblower retaliation, Congress made a proposed penalty mandatory rather than optional.

Capovilla & Williams: Federal Employment Law Firm

Capovilla & Williams built its reputation on a simple idea, borrowed from our own motto Vincit qui patitur: he who endures wins. Federal employment cases test your endurance, because your agency has lawyers, records, and time on its side, and you’re often facing all three alone.

Our federal employment team has been on both sides of the table, and that experience shapes how we build your case from the first phone call. We represent federal employees nationwide, whether you’re fighting a wrongful removal, a retaliatory investigation, or a rating that dropped the same week you spoke up.

Contact our firm today, and let’s find out what happened in your case.