Court blocks OPM ‘loyalty question’ from use in agency job applications

Agencies can no longer include the Trump administration’s “loyalty question” in job listings after a federal court granted a stay motion to block its use in civil service applications.

In an order issued Friday, the District Court for the District of Massachusetts sided with the plaintiffs in American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Kupor, ruling that workers applying to agency positions faced irreparable harm in having to answer the question.

Within seven days, the Office of Personnel Management is required to provide notice of the stay to all heads or acting heads of departments and agencies that used the question in the hiring process. An OPM spokesperson said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation.

“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 questions,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “Federal employees should be hired based solely on their ability to perform the job — not their allegiance to any particular administration.”

The case, filed in November 2025, challenged a key piece of the OPM’s so-called Merit Hiring Plan, which was issued in May of that year. 

The plan detailed steps aimed at reforming the federal hiring process, including the creation of an essay question in agency job listings that asked applicants how they would “help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role.” Candidates were also asked to identify “one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are” significant to them.

Court filings last December included pseudonymous declarations from four federal workers. Those documents painted a picture of the potential for politicization of agency work — which an attorney for the plaintiffs told FedScoop at the time was the “intended impact” of the loyalty question.

“Federal hiring for career jobs is supposed to be based on merit, not politics,” said Ori Lev, co-counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy. “You want the best people in the jobs, regardless of whether they’re Democrats or Republicans or independents, and that’s true regardless who’s in office. That’s the system that Congress set up, because that’s the system that produces results for the American people.”

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. wrote in the ruling Friday that the plaintiffs — a collection of labor unions — were likely to succeed on the merits not only through their irreparable harm claim, but also over potential government violations of the Administrative Procedure Act.

On the APA, which dictates how agencies enact new regulations and rules, the judge wrote that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that “there is no legitimate governmental interest in inquiring into the political beliefs of applicants to federal civil service vacancies,” and that the loyalty question was “not narrowly tailored.”

O’Toole relied on the pseudonymous declarations to gauge the irreparable harm claim, noting that one of the federal workers had standing to sue as an individual because she “reasonably understood the plain language of” the loyalty question that called for a statement on her personal political views. “That identified harm is a cognizable injury in fact,” the judge wrote.

The stay on agencies from using the loyalty question will remain in effect until a further order from the court.

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs along with Protect Democracy and Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, said in a statement that Friday’s decision “reaffirms the importance of a nonpartisan civilian workforce that serves the American people.”

“For more than a century, civil servants have been hired based on their merits, not based on allegiance to a partisan political agenda,” she said. “This ruling protects the Constitution, the civil service, and the people who depend on a professional, nonpartisan federal workforce.”

Madison Alder contributed to this article.