Boca Raton, FL

When Donald Trump became President, Spencer Goidel had a job in the Boca Raton, Florida, office of the Internal Revenue Service. As an equal employment opportunity specialist, he advised IRS managers on hiring practices, trained workers on sexual harassment and discrimination, and did his best to settle complaints before they could trigger lawsuits against the government.

Goidel lost that job in early May. While his reduction-in-force notice didn’t come with much explanation, one of the new administration’s first acts had been to issue a statement condemning Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs as a source of “immense public waste and shameful discrimination,” and adding: “That ends today.”

Getting laid off is a career setback for most people. It can be a life-wrecker for others.

Goidel had been hired under a process called Schedule A, designed for job candidates with disabilities. In his case, the disability was Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Because private companies don’t often have the patience or knowledge to evaluate people with such conditions, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, encouraging the federal government to look harder at job candidates like him. Thanks to that law and other measures, the government has become a major employer of disabled Americans over the past half-century. By the time of his dismissal, Goidel was one of about half a million federal employees with a disability.

“A lot of people who are disabled, they came to the federal government because it was a model employer for disabled individuals,” Goidel told a reporter for the Associated Press. If the government turns its back on then, he added, many could “have nowhere else to go.”

The Internal Revenue Service has been a major Trump administration target, losing roughly 25 percent of its workforce so far. Big cuts are coming elsewhere. According to Govexec.com, the Veterans Affairs Department has plans to lay off up to 83,000 workers by the end of 2025. 

Posted on August 9, 2025