Yes. On September 11, 2026, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole in Boston stayed the Office of Personnel Management’s Merit Hiring Plan requirement that civil-service applicants answer a free-response essay asking how they would advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities, and which orders or initiatives were significant to them.
Unions including AFGE argued the prompt functioned as a partisan loyalty test for nonpartisan career jobs. O’Toole found applicants could reasonably read it as probing political beliefs and that plaintiffs were likely to show no legitimate governmental interest in that inquiry for ordinary civil-service vacancies, citing the Administrative Procedure Act and First Amendment concerns. Plaintiffs said more than 70,000 federal job postings had included the question; the stay stops further use pending further court order.
Source: Reuters