Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act

The act was sponsored by Senator George H. Pendleton, an Ohio Democrat, and passed with bipartisan support after the assassination of President James Garfield by a disappointed office seeker in 1881 and Republican losses in the 1882 midterm elections. President Chester Arthur, himself a product of the New York patronage system, signed it on January 16, 1883. It applied the British practice of competitive examination to American government.

The act created a classified service in which positions were filled through competitive examinations testing practical fitness, and it barred removing or demoting classified employees for refusing to make political contributions or perform political service. It prohibited soliciting campaign contributions from federal employees on federal property. It created a three-member Civil Service Commission, with no more than two members from the same party, to run examinations and enforce the rules. Theodore Roosevelt served as a commissioner from 1889 to 1895.

At first the act covered only about 10 percent of federal jobs, mostly in large post offices and customs houses, but it let the President extend the classified service by executive order. Presidents often did so near the end of their terms, protecting their own appointees, and coverage grew to a large majority of the workforce by the 1950s. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 replaced the commission, but the Pendleton Act's basic principles of competitive hiring and protection from political removal remain at the core of federal employment law and of current debates over presidential control of the workforce.