Protecting VA Employees Act
The Protecting VA Employees Act would remove the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) separate disciplinary tracks for certain VA employees and require VA employees to be governed by the same removal, demotion, and suspension rules that apply to most other federal employees. It would repeal specific provisions in Title 38 and Title 5 that currently provide VA-specific processes, and it would realign the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) disciplinary and grievance procedures with the pre-2017 framework. The bill also reorganizes and renames sections to emphasize whistleblower protections within the broader federal personnel system. In short, the bill seeks to standardize discipline across the federal government and restore older procedural rights for VA personnel, including whistleblower protections.
Key Points
- 1Repeals VA-specific removal, demotion, and suspension processes in Title 38 §714 and related provisions in Title 5 §4303, removing separate VA disciplinary procedures for covered employees.
- 2Applies the same federal civil service discipline framework to VA employees as to other federal employees, aligning accountability policies with general rules.
- 3Makes conforming changes in Title 38 to reorganize and rename sections, including moving provisions related to whistleblower protections to new or reorganized sections (e.g., a new “Protections for whistleblowers from removal, demotion, and suspension” section).
- 4Restores certain disciplinary and grievance procedures for personnel of the Veterans Health Administration to how those provisions read immediately before the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 (Public Law 115-41), effectively reversing the 2017 changes for those personnel.
- 5Short title of the measure is the “Protecting VA Employees Act.”