The civil servant who has found herself at the center of the agency’s tea party-targeting scandal was placed on administrative leave Thursday. The move came a day after Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a senior member of the tax writing Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday that Lerner was placed on administrative leave after she refused a request from Danny Werfel, the newly installed acting IRS commissioner, to resign.

( PHOTOS: IRS hearing on Capitol Hill)

“My understanding is the new acting IRS commissioner asked for Ms. Lerner’s resignation, and she refused to resign,” Grassley said. “She was then put on administrative leave instead. From all accounts so far, the IRS acting commissioner was on solid ground to ask for her resignation.”

The IRS and the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Werfel named Ken Corbin to be the new acting director of exempt organizations in a statement released Thursday that did not mention Lerner. Corbin was previously a deputy director in the agency’s wage and investment division.

The shakeup suggests that Werfel is working to respond to the intense anger on Capitol Hill in the wake of the scandal. Lawmakers from both parties have called on Lerner to step down over the past week.

( PHOTOS: 8 key players in IRS scandal story)

Since he officially took control of the IRS on Wednesday, Werfel has met with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the panel’s top Republican.

Lerner sparked the scandal on May 10 when she told a Washington legal conference that the IRS inappropriately scrutinized nonprofit groups if they had ties to organizations like the tea party.

A subsequent report from the IRS inspector general further stoked the political controversy.

Lerner struck a defiant tone at Wednesday’s House Oversight hearing before invoking the Fifth Amendment.

“I have not done anything wrong,” she told the committee. “I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other committee.”

Lerner will continue to be paid while on leave per civil service rules, according to a congressional source.

It’s difficult to fire a civil service employee because the termination can be appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board — a process that can take over a year.

But the first step is to place the employee on paid administrative leave and then — if the decision is made to fire them — give them 30 days to respond. If the decision stands, they can appeal to the board, but they’re off the federal payroll while that happens.

One group that was targeted with the inappropriate search terms said that paid administrative leave is not acceptable.

“In our opinion, Ms. Lerner should be charged with contempt of Congress and be in jail, not sitting at home collecting even more taxpayer dollars than the $700,000 we paid her over the past four years which she spent unlawfully denying U.S. citizens of their constitutional rights,” said Tom Zawistowski, the past president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, one of the groups that was singled out for harsh scrutiny.

Sean Gailmard, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told POLITICO that paid administrative leave eventually runs out — so Lerner won’t get paid forever.

Just as professors build up a number of days each year for sabbatical, top level government employees get a few days each year to store up for leave, he said. Ultimately, that paid leave drains out — though there’s no limit to how long Lerner could be on administrative leave, he said.

In the wake of a scandal last year over a General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas, the House easily passed legislation to give agencies the option of suspending high-level employees without pay. Lawmakers were angry that one of the GSA employees who organized the lavish conference with clowns and mind readers was suspended but being paid.

The Senate never took up the bill.

Earlier in the day, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) called for Lerner to be put on leave.

In a letter to Werfel, the two senators said Lerner was not forthcoming with information about the targeting of conservative groups when she was interviewed on April 30 by the staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which Levin and McCain lead.

“Given the serious failure by Ms. Lerner to disclose to this Subcommittee key information on topics that the Subcommittee was investigating, we have lost confidence in her ability to fulfill her duties as Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS,” they wrote.

The National Review first reported that Lerner has been placed on leave.