Key facts
- A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from asking civil service job applicants a "loyalty question."
- The question required applicants to explain how they would help advance President Trump's policies and executive orders.
- Unions argued the question unlawfully politicized the hiring process for nonpartisan federal jobs.
- Judge George O'Toole ruled the question likely violated the First Amendment's speech rights.
- Over 70,000 federal job postings had included the question.
- A U.S. judge ruled that the Trump administration broke the law by ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cut its workforce in half.
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from continuing to ask applicants for civil service jobs a "loyalty question," which unions described as a partisan query that unlawfully politicized the hiring process. U.S. District Judge George O'Toole ruled that the question, which required applicants to write essays on how they would advance President Donald Trump's policies and executive orders, likely violated the First Amendment's speech rights.
In a separate ruling, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that the Trump administration broke the law by ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to cut its workforce in half. Illston stated that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully by usurping FEMA's authority over its own personnel and steering the agency to cut thousands of disaster-response jobs. The judge agreed with unions that the department violated federal law when it moved last year to stop FEMA from renewing the temporary contracts of thousands of on-call reservists.
The unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), argued that the loyalty question mandated by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was an attempt to assess applicants' support for the Republican president, despite the Civil Service Reform Act barring employment decisions based on political affiliation. Lawyers for the unions noted that over 70,000 federal job postings had included the question, undermining a merit-based hiring system. AFGE National President Everett Kelley said requiring applicants to answer politically motivated questions goes against the nonpartisan nature of the civil service.
FEMA projected its staffing levels for the upcoming fiscal year at 11,383 employees, approximately half of prior levels, without any basis for choosing that number, Illston wrote. The judge also faulted FEMA and DHS officials for using the Signal messaging app on their personal cell phones to communicate about staffing cuts and deleting the messages, presuming the lost messages would have been unfavorable to the defendants.