\n
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \n The post Trump\u2019s Civil Service Loyalty Test Just Hit A Constitutional Road Bump<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s project to remake the federal civil service into something that screens for loyalty just hit a road bump in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n On Friday, U.S. District Judge George O\u2019Toole granted three federal-employee unions a stay under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act, temporarily barring federal agencies from putting \u201cQuestion Three\u201d on civil service job applications. That\u2019s the essay prompt, rolled out as part of the administration\u2019s May 2025 \u201cMerit Hiring Plan,\u201d itself the offspring of Executive Order 14170 and its stated goal of staffing the government with \u201chighly skilled Americans dedicated to the furtherance of American ideals\u201d \u2014 asking applicants to \u201c[i]dentify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.\u201d<\/p>\n Which everyone outside of the MAGA brain trust immediately clocked as a loyalty test.<\/p>\n Include Judge O\u2019Toole. The unions (AFGE, AFSCME, and NAGE) argued the question forces career applicants to praise the president\u2019s agenda, stay silent, or answer honestly and risk their shot, all for jobs that have nothing to do with politics, and the judge agreed they\u2019re likely to win on the merits.<\/p>\n O\u2019Toole held the government\u2019s proffered interest \u2014 its \u201cdiscretion in administering its hiring and recruitment processes\u201d \u2014 doesn\u2019t cut it, because the Civil Service Reform Act flatly prohibits hiring decisions based on political affiliation. Political allegiance isn\u2019t \u201can appropriate requirement for the effective performance\u201d of the jobs at issue, which the unions helpfully noted include Air Traffic Control Specialist, Nuclear Materials Courier, and Crane Operator. The question is neither tied to a legitimate government interest nor narrowly tailored to one. Irreparable harm is presumed in the First Amendment context, and the equities and public interest both tip toward the unions. <\/p>\n Now, the administration has other tools for reshaping the federal workforce, from mass firings to Schedule F reclassifications to simply making a DOJ job unpleasant enough that the lawyers leave on their own<\/a>. Plus the naked partisanism of exactly this kind of move has curdled the prestige <\/a> of federal work, making it a hard sell on its own. But the piece of the plan that made applicants put their loyalty in writing is, for now, on ice.<\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s project to remake the federal civil service into something that screens for loyalty just hit a road bump in Massachusetts. On Friday, U.S. District Judge George O\u2019Toole granted three federal-employee unions a stay under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act, temporarily barring federal agencies from putting \u201cQuestion Three\u201d on civil service job […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2021\/06\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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\nKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"