Federal agencies have been quietly removing what’s known as the Trump “loyalty question” from job applications, after a federal judge ruled earlier this month that it is likely unconstitutional.

Last year, the Trump administration started asking government job seekers to explain how they would “help advance” President Donald Trump’s priorities in their new role. They also asked applicants to name one or two favorites among Trump’s executive orders and explain how they would “help implement them if hired.”

Under federal law, hiring and promotion in the civil service is supposed to be nonpartisan and based on merit, as opposed to political allegiance to Trump or the Republican Party. Ethics watchdogs and employee unions said the administration’s questions were a blatant effort to further politicize the federal workforce and weed out job seekers deemed insufficiently loyal to the president.

A federal judge sided with the unions and issued a stay on Sept. 11, ordering the White House’s Office of Personnel Management not to use the question while the lawsuit proceeds.

“Hiring and promotion in the civil service is supposed to be nonpartisan and based on merit, as opposed to political allegiance to Trump or the Republican Party.”

Although the Trump administration has treated many court orders as optional, so far it appears to be honoring the stay. In a status report filed to the court on Friday, the Justice Department said OPM had notified all federal agencies that they cannot use the question in new job announcements.

However, the decision to include that question is still creating problems. According to the filing, officials have struggled to remove it from some job listings that were already posted, since they would have to delete it manually from roughly 6,000 of them, and potentially mess up ongoing hires in the process.

“OPM determined that the lower-risk course was to expressly and unequivocably direct agencies not to consider responses” to the question, but to leave the open postings alone, the Justice Department said, noting that most of those postings would close by the end of September anyway.

A source involved in the litigation told HuffPost that the question has only popped up in five new job postings since the judge issued the stay, suggesting officials were indeed trying to remove it.

For new job postings, OPM told agencies to ask applicants a revised, less overtly political question:

“In this role, you will be expected to professionally and efficiently implement executive direction. Provide an example where you implemented leadership direction on a strategy or policy decision that differed from your own recommendation.”

The administration may continue fighting in court to include the original question on job applications, though the judge in the case, George A. O’Toole Jr., said in his order that the unions were “likely to succeed” with their constitutional argument.

Democracy Forward, a public-interest legal group representing the unions in the case, said in a statement that the stay “protects the Constitution, the civil service, and the people who depend on a professional, nonpartisan federal workforce.”

The administration rolled out the original question in May 2025 as part of what it called a “merit hiring plan.” It was characterized as a “short, free-response essay question,” though critics quickly dubbed it the “loyalty question.” The unions argued it imposed an “unconstitutional condition on employment,” with applicants being chosen “on the basis of professed political beliefs and loyalties.”

After blowback to the question, the administration started saying that answering it was optional. But many applicants would have feared their application would be tossed in the trash if they didn’t say something nice about Trump’s executive orders. Some probably felt compelled to lie.

An employee of the Department of Education explained in a court declaration how the question put him in a jam and prevented him from applying for new federal jobs.

“Honesty is important to me, and I cannot in good conscience pretend to agree with President Trump’s policies,” the worker said. “Even if the question is supposed to be optional, I believe it would be used against me if I don’t answer. After all, the question is there for a reason.”

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