Judge halts ‘favorite EO’ question on federal job applications

A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a decision Friday halting federal agencies from asking job applicants about their favorite Trump administration initiative, concluding the essay question likely violated jobseekers’ First Amendment rights.

The case dates back to the Office of Personnel Management’s issuance of the Merit Hiring Plan, which asserted greater engagement in the hiring process by political appointees and introduced four essay questions to most federal job applications, in May 2025. The third question asked jobseekers how they would advance the president’s policies and asked for an example of an executive order or initiative “significant to” them.

In U.S. District Judge George O’Toole’s long-awaited ruling, he focused on a sworn declaration of a federal employee and member of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of three unions suing to block the question’s deployment, who said she felt compelled to provide an answer contrary to her personal views for fear that not answering—or answering honestly—would “hurt her application.”

“The plain language of Question Three calls for the applicant’s personal views on a political topic, and directly links that personal view to the duties of the desired civil service job,” O’Toole wrote. “Indeed, the defendants implicitly recognize the reasonableness of such an interpretation insofar as the [Merit Hiring Plan] guidance states that answers to Question Three and the other free-form essay questions should not be used as ‘an ideological litmus test.’ Notably, as far as the court can discern from the present record, the limitation stated in the MHP guidance does not appear in the text of Question Three as it is presented to civil service applicants.”

Attorneys for the Trump administration had sought to argue that O’Toole lacked jurisdiction to hear the case; instead, the unions or their members should have exhausted administrative processes before either the Federal Labor Relations Authority or the Merit Systems Protection Board, then appeal those decisions in federal circuit court.

But the judge said the unions’ constitutional claims were “wholly collateral” to those review schemes, and noted that the alleged First Amendment violations occurred regardless of the outcome of a hiring decision.

“[The unions] do not, however, seek to remedy an identified personnel decision against any one of their members,” O’Toole wrote. “Put another way, there is no ‘personnel practice’ at issue. In fact, under the plaintiffs’ theory, even a civil service employee who receives a promotion would suffer a constitutionally based injury alleged if faced with Question Three when completing the relevant application.”

O’Toole issued a stay in the case, requiring agencies to cease asking applicants for every federal job GS-5 and above the favorite EO question at least until the conclusion of litigation. But he found that he could not issue a preliminary injunction blocking agencies from considering answers to the question that they had already received from job applicants, for the same reason.

“The requested injunction would thus effectively restrain the defendants’ conduct when reaching hiring decisions in individual cases,” he wrote. “The plaintiffs, however, repeatedly emphasize that this dispute does not concern individual personnel decisions involving their members. Indeed, the plaintiffs contend that the challenged question causes their members’ constitutional injuries regardless of any ensuing personnel decision. Accordingly, the requested injunction would not redress the injuries alleged.”

Union leaders, alongside Democracy Forward, which helped represent them alongside Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP in the case, applauded Friday’s decision.

“Requiring federal job applicants to answer politically motivated questions goes against the very nature of the nonpartisan civil service, and we are pleased the judge has put an immediate stop to the administration’s loyalty question,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley. “Federal employees should be hired based solely on their ability to perform the job—not their allegiance to any particular administration.”

“For more than a century, civil servants have been hired based on their merits, not based on allegiance to a partisan political agenda,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “Today’s decision—stopping the Trump-Vance administration’s required loyalty question for public servants—reaffirms the importance of a nonpartisan civilian workforce that serves the American people.”