The rule, issued last week, strips the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures from OPM regulations and eliminates references to the framework from category rating rules. OPM is accepting public comments for 60 days, though the change is already in force.
DOJ Legal Opinion Drove the Change
The move follows a June 9 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which concluded that UGESP is both unlawful and unconstitutional. DOJ argued the framework violates Title VII by examining only disparate impact without considering an employer’s actual intent, and asserted that the guidelines pressure federal agencies and private employers alike to introduce “race-based decision-making” into hiring to avoid liability.
OPM framed the regulatory rollback as a reduction in burden and a clarification of hiring rules. In a July 31 press release, the agency described UGESP as “obsolete and legally inconsistent.” OPM Director Scott Kupor said the change preserves rigorous standards while aligning regulations with current legal guidance.
“Federal hiring should be based on merit, qualifications and the ability to perform the job,” Kupor said. “This rule ensures OPM’s regulations reflect legal guidance while preserving the rigorous, job-related standards that help agencies recruit and hire the most qualified workforce in service to the American people.”
What UGESP Did Since 1978
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted UGESP in 1978 to give employers a structured method for gauging whether hiring assessments produced a disparate impact on protected classes based on race, gender, or other demographics. The disparate impact theory holds that facially neutral policies can still disproportionately disadvantage certain groups, even absent intentional discrimination.
OPM said the scope of its interim final rule is “limited.” The agency wrote that federal agencies remain responsible for ensuring selection practices are merit-based, supported by job analysis, rationally related to job performance, professionally developed, and administered without prohibited discrimination.
The DOJ opinion does not amend Title VII itself, but signals the Trump administration’s broader posture on hiring practices. It builds on an April 2025 executive order directing agencies to deprioritize regulations referencing the disparate impact theory.
Civil Service Exam Revival Advances in Parallel
OPM is simultaneously pursuing other hiring assessment overhauls. Last year, DOJ dismissed a nearly 50-year-old court-imposed ban on a “civil service exam,” a Carter-era decree DOJ characterized in August 2025 as “based on flawed and outdated theories of diversity, equity and inclusion.”
OPM senior advisor Noah Peters said the administration has built “a comprehensive civil service exam that actually works.” In a blog post Tuesday, Peters wrote that self-assessments can no longer be used to rate and rank candidates, ending what he called the era of “rate yourself an expert, get referred.” Competitive hires now face technical assessments, with validated USA Hire batteries available across more than 400 occupational series and additional batteries in development.
Public Service Group Raises Resourcing Concerns
Jenny Mattingley, vice president of public policy and stakeholder engagement at the Partnership for Public Service, said UGESP has been instrumental in improving federal hiring assessments over decades. She said the framework gave candidates who believed they had been unfairly impacted a mechanism to challenge hiring practices through the EEOC.
“We’ve really come a long way in terms of the types of assessments that are out there; building better assessments that aren’t biased and that really are looking at technical expertise,” Mattingley said. “But part of the reason we’ve come a long way is because there was that framework — and candidates who felt like they had been unfairly impacted, or that the assessment they had to take was biased, had a mechanism to actually question, through the EEOC, the hiring practices of an organization.”
Without UGESP in place, Mattingley said robust HR teams staffed with industrial-organizational psychologists and workforce experts become even more critical to ensuring assessments are credible and fair. She cautioned that agencies generally lack those resources now.
“But those elements aren’t what agencies have, and I don’t yet see OPM helping agencies figure out how to get there,” Mattingley said. “My one hope would be, if they are removing some of these frameworks and guardrails, that they are equally focused on resourcing agencies to do assessments well.”
What Happens Next
The 60-day public comment window will determine whether OPM revises the interim final rule before finalizing it. Agencies must now navigate hiring assessment design without the UGESP framework as a reference, relying on the merit principles OPM says remain binding. Watch for whether OPM issues implementing guidance on how agencies should validate assessments, and whether the EEOC weighs in on enforcement given the DOJ opinion’s narrow view of disparate impact liability. The parallel civil service exam rollout will also test whether technical assessments can fill the gap UGESP leaves behind.
— Sofia Alvarez, government desk, AXO News