BOSTON, UNITED STATES — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from using a federal job-application question asking candidates how they would advance the president's executive orders and policy priorities, finding that unions are likely to succeed on claims that the practice violates applicants' First Amendment rights.
U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. issued the preliminary injunction on September 11 in American Federation of Government Employees v. Kupor, a case brought against the Office of Personnel Management, its director Scott Kupor and the United States.
The ruling targets one of four essay prompts introduced under OPM's Merit Hiring Plan. Applicants were asked how they would help advance the president's executive orders and policy priorities and to identify one or two initiatives they considered significant. O'Toole concluded that the unions were likely to succeed in arguing that use of the question violated First Amendment protections and, consequently, the Administrative Procedure Act.
The order is preliminary rather than a final judgment on the lawsuit. But its immediate practical consequence is significant: OPM cannot enforce its directive requiring federal agencies to put the challenged question on civil-service applications while the litigation proceeds.
O'Toole's order removes the presidential-policy question but does not end the lawsuit
The ruling does not strike down the Trump administration's entire Merit Hiring Plan.
It addresses the particular essay question challenged by the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Association of Government Employees. The three unions filed their lawsuit in the District of Massachusetts on November 6, 2025.
The plaintiffs characterize the prompt as a political “loyalty question.” That terminology is their characterization rather than OPM's official name for it.
The distinction matters because OPM presented the four essays as part of a broader effort to reform federal recruitment. Its May 2025 plan also asks applicants about commitment to the Constitution and founding principles, improving government efficiency and effectiveness, and the role of work ethic in their achievements.
O'Toole did not give the unions everything they requested. He declined to issue a broader preliminary injunction prohibiting the government from incorporating applicants' previous answers — or decisions not to answer — into hiring decisions.
That limitation makes the immediate effect narrower than permanently invalidating the hiring system. The contested question is blocked going forward under the preliminary order, but the underlying case remains unresolved.
OPM told agencies to ask applicants how they would advance presidential policies
The disputed prompt can be traced directly to President Donald Trump's January 20, 2025 executive order on federal recruitment and OPM's subsequent implementation plan.
OPM and the White House Domestic Policy Council issued the Merit Hiring Plan on May 29, 2025. The plan instructed agencies to include four short free-response questions in federal job applications at GS-5 and above.
The third asked candidates, in substance, to explain how they would use their position to advance presidential executive orders and policy priorities and to identify initiatives that were significant to them.
OPM's implementation material described the essays differently from conventional scored employment assessments. Agency guidance told applicants that responses were not mandatory and would not be scored, while encouraging answers of no more than 200 words. Applicants were also told to certify that the responses were their own and had not been generated by a consultant or artificial-intelligence system.
The Merit Hiring Plan nonetheless applied broadly. OPM's frequently asked questions said all agencies, including independent agencies, were covered by the plan, although some personnel systems outside Title 5 were instructed to align with it only to the greatest extent practicable.
OPM's USA Staffing material further specified that the questions applied to federal competitive-service vacancy announcements at GS-5 and above, with exceptions including teachers, Wage Grade employees and seasonal workers and discretion for agencies to exempt other positions.
That breadth transformed the constitutional dispute from a disagreement about one agency or occupation into a challenge to a central component of government-wide recruitment.
More than 70,000 job postings had included the disputed prompt, unions say
The scale of the policy expanded substantially while the litigation was pending.
The unions and their lawyers said more than 70,000 federal job postings had included the disputed question by the time O'Toole issued his injunction. That figure comes from the plaintiffs rather than an independently published OPM total and should therefore be attributed accordingly.
Reporting on the decision says O'Toole noted that the prompt appeared across markedly different occupations, including positions for air-traffic-control specialists, crane operators and nuclear-materials couriers.
That range is central to the unions' legal argument. Political affiliation can be relevant to a limited class of policymaking or confidential government positions, but the disputed system reached career civil-service vacancies intended to operate under statutory merit principles.
OPM, for its part, has maintained that the essays were optional and that political or ideological beliefs could not be considered in hiring decisions. Director Scott Kupor said when the lawsuit was filed that the Merit Hiring Plan prohibited ideological litmus tests and reinforced the nonpartisan character of the federal workforce.
The dispute therefore involved not only what the written OPM guidance said but how a reasonable applicant might understand a request to identify presidential policies personally significant to them while seeking government employment.
The judge found the unions likely to prevail on their First Amendment argument
O'Toole's preliminary ruling focused on that constitutional problem.
The judge concluded that union members could reasonably interpret the question as an attempt to discover applicants' political views. Federal civil-service law separately prohibits certain personnel decisions based on political affiliation, a statutory framework that reinforces the longstanding distinction between political appointments and career government employment.
O'Toole found the plaintiffs likely to succeed in showing that the government lacked a legitimate interest in investigating political beliefs of applicants for federal civil-service vacancies. He consequently found a likely First Amendment violation sufficient to support their Administrative Procedure Act challenge.
That is not yet a final determination that every claim in the unions' complaint is correct.
A preliminary injunction instead requires a court to evaluate the case before final judgment, including the plaintiffs' likelihood of success and the risk of irreparable harm if the challenged conduct continues.
AFSCME said the court found that continued use of the question would inflict irreparable harm on workers applying to the merit-based civil service.
The unions' broader lawsuit also raises claims involving the Privacy Act and argues that the hiring policy facilitates viewpoint discrimination and unlawfully gathers information about applicants' political beliefs. Those issues remain part of the underlying litigation.
The federal hiring overhaul began with Trump's January 2025 executive order
The essay requirement did not emerge as an isolated OPM initiative.
Trump's January 2025 executive order directed the development of a federal hiring plan aimed at recruiting highly skilled employees committed to American ideals, values and interests. OPM and the Domestic Policy Council responded with the May 29 Merit Hiring Plan.
The plan made several changes beyond the essays. It called for greater participation by agency leadership in hiring, a two-page limit on resumes, more descriptive job titles, expanded use of technical or alternative assessments and efforts to reduce the government's time-to-hire.
Those provisions illustrate why the court order should not be described as blocking Trump's federal hiring overhaul as a whole.
The September 11 decision specifically restricts use of the presidential-policy essay. Other components of the Merit Hiring Plan are not invalidated merely because one part has been preliminarily enjoined.
That distinction is especially important for applicants: the ruling does not abolish federal hiring assessments, restore the former long-form federal resume or eliminate the other recruitment changes implemented under the plan.
Federal applicants should no longer face the blocked question while the injunction remains in force
For people currently seeking career federal employment, the immediate effect is more concrete than the larger constitutional debate.
OPM is prevented from enforcing the directive requiring agencies to include the disputed presidential-policy question while the case proceeds.
Applicants may still encounter the remaining parts of the federal application system and other Merit Hiring Plan requirements. The decision is not a general prohibition on asking candidates how they would perform their duties or implement lawful agency programs.
Instead, it draws a preliminary judicial line around a question that asked applicants to identify presidential initiatives significant to them and explain how they would advance those initiatives after being hired.
The injunction could also require operational changes across vacancy announcements and application systems where the prompt had already been incorporated. OPM's own resources show that USA Staffing contained specific tools for adding the Merit Hiring Plan essay questions to announcement questionnaires.
As of the reporting reviewed for this article, OPM had not publicly announced a replacement question or comprehensive revised guidance responding to O'Toole's September 11 order. Reuters reported that the agency did not immediately respond to its request for comment following the decision.
An appeal or final judgment could still change the legal position
The September ruling resolves an important immediate question but not the litigation itself.
The case — AFGE v. Kupor, No. 1:25-cv-13305-GAO — remains before the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It began in November 2025, when the three unions challenged the Merit Hiring Plan and sought declaratory and injunctive relief.
The court had already dealt with a related confidentiality dispute in July 2026, when O'Toole allowed union members supporting the preliminary-relief motion to submit certain declarations under pseudonyms. The judge limited that permission to the preliminary-relief stage.
The September injunction represents a substantially more consequential step because it directly changes what the government may do while the lawsuit continues.
It is nevertheless temporary judicial relief, not a final adjudication of the entire case. The administration may seek appellate review, and the district court must still address the merits unless subsequent litigation resolves the dispute another way.
No appeal should be described as filed unless and until the court record confirms one.
For now, the clearest practical consequence is also the narrowest: federal agencies cannot continue using the challenged presidential-policy essay under OPM's directive while O'Toole's injunction remains operative.