Unions urge court to force ruling in ‘loyalty question’ lawsuit

A coalition of federal employee unions this week urged a federal appeals court to compel a lower court judge to act upon a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s introduction of essay questions that many say amount to a presidential loyalty test for federal jobseekers.

The American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Association of Government Employees sued the Office of Personnel Management last November after the government’s dedicated HR agency introduced four essay questions to be issued with all federal job postings, including one question asking applicants their favorite Trump policy or executive order.

While OPM has insisted that the essay questions are optional and will not be used to adjudicate hiring decisions, the unions have argued mere presence alone serves to both coerce or chill the speech of federal jobseekers and highlighted evidence that at least in some instances, responses were, in fact, mandatory.

The unions had asked U.S. District Judge George O’Toole, a Clinton appointee in Massachusetts, for a preliminary injunction blocking federal agencies from including the essay questions as part of their job application process. Both parties had filed their legal briefs on the matter by December 10, and a hearing on the unions’ motion was held on March 11.

But since then, the case has ground to a halt. The unions on Monday filed a writ of mandamus with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, requesting the appeals court compel O’Toole to publish a decision on the proposed injunction “promptly.”

In their filing, the unions said that in the time since they first requested the court take action, the deployment of the essay questions has expanded rapidly.

“When the unions filed their complaint, the loyalty question had appeared on over 5,800 job postings on USAjobs.gov, the website operated by OPM that serves as ‘the federal government’s official employment site,’” they wrote. “By the time briefing was completed on the motion, approximately 8,500 jobs had been posted with the loyalty question. On April 27, 2026, the unions informed the court that they had learned, contrary to the government’s representations, that applicants could not skip answering the loyalty question on USAJobs postings. In the same notice, the unions apprised the court that the loyalty question had appeared on over 33,000 job postings.”

As of press time, nearly 48,000 job postings on USAJobs featured the essay questions as part of the application process, according to an online tool that scrapes the various listings on the job site.

“Every day that the [Merit Hiring Plan] is not stayed or enjoined, the unions’ members who are interested in federal jobs face the dilemma of how to respond to this plainly unconstitutional loyalty question—by speaking favorably about the current administration’s policies regardless of the individuals’ own personal convictions; by speaking on political matters (when they would prefer not to speak); by remaining silent when they would prefer to offer their sincerely held views but feel they cannot; or by declining to apply to jobs that include the offending question,” the unions wrote. “In other words, every day, the unions’ members endure irreparable First Amendment injury.”