The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act (ch. 27, 22 Stat. 403) of United States is a federal law established in 1883 that decided that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation.he law was only applied to federal government jobs and not to the state and local jobs that were the basis for political machines. At first the Pendleton Act only covered a very minimum quantity of jobs, only about 10% of the US government's civilian employees had civil service jobs.