This story was updated at 3:52 p.m. on April 28 to include comments from an OPM official
New essay questions on many federal job applications, asking candidates how they would advance the Trump administration’s policies, are optional, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
But new documents submitted in a lawsuit seeking the removal of these essays show that job candidates can’t submit their online job applications if they leave the fields for essay responses blank.
One of several essay questions, outlined under the Trump administration’s Merit Hiring Plan, asks candidates how they would “advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities,” to name “one or two executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you,” and how they would help implement them if hired.
Federal employee unions who filed the lawsuit last fall claim the inclusion of a “loyalty question” on federal job applications runs counter to the nonpartisan nature of the civil service, because it allows the “Trump administration to weed out those who do not voice sufficient support for President Trump and reward those who do.”
Ori Lev, an attorney at Protect Democracy who is representing the plaintiffs, told the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in a declaration posted Monday that he recently went through the application process for several federal job openings — but in each case, the essay questions were marked as a “required” field.
“The webpage would not allow me to submit the application without the loyalty question being answered,” Lev wrote.
Lev wrote that he was unable to submit applications for a variety of federal jobs — including assistant U.S. attorney at the Justice Department, safety and occupational health specialist at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and clinical psychologist at the Defense Health Agency — without filling out the essay prompts.
An OPM official told Federal News Network that the default setting on USA Staffing, a talent acquisition system run by OPM, is that the essay questions are not required.
“The default, in other words, is to not require all questions. To change that, agencies have to then change it manually to make the questions required,” the OPM official said. “If agencies are choosing to require the questions, contrary to OPM guidance, that’s not our decision.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs told the court that, despite the Trump administration’s claims that the essay questions are optional and that refusal to answer won’t count against a candidate’s consideration, recent civil service job postings “require that candidates provide responses to the loyalty question.”
“When candidates encounter the loyalty question in these postings, it includes a red asterisk indicating that a response is required. If a candidate does not submit a response to the loyalty question, they are unable to apply to the job. In short, one of defendants’ primary justifications for the purported legality of the loyalty question — that it is not required — is not factually accurate,” they wrote.
According to data collected by the plaintiffs, these questions have appeared on about 33,000 job postings so far — about a quarter of federal job applications with questionnaires posted since OPM unveiled its Merit Hiring Plan nearly a year ago. Plaintiffs said the essay question was added to 16,000 new civil service job postings in March and April this year — “effectively doubling the number of civil service job postings that have included the loyalty question since its adoption.”
The plaintiffs say the essay questions have appeared on nearly 75% of job postings from the Justice Department and Energy Department during this period, and nearly 100% of job postings from the Labor Department.
The unions claim the essay question violates the free speech rights of job candidates, because it “compels applicants to voice certain viewpoints and opinions, to self-censor, or to decline to apply for positions they are otherwise interested in.” They also claim the question violates the Privacy Act, because it “collects unnecessary and irrelevant information about the exercise of applicants’ First Amendment rights.”
“Because of the loyalty question, each month, thousands (if not tens of thousands) of new job applicants, including plaintiffs’ members, are compelled to speak, when they must answer a political question as part of their job application; or chilled from speaking their minds or from applying for the jobs at all,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote on Monday.
According to data collected by plaintiffs, the essay questions appeared more frequently for jobs the Trump administration has prioritized filling.
About 60% of attorney positions include the essays questions. Nearly 50% of IT positions and nearly 45% of general engineering positions also include them.
OPM has been looking to bring about 1,000 technologists into the federal workforce through its Tech Force Program, and recruit legal experts through its newly launched Attorney Talent Network.
Nearly 45% of human resources positions also included the essay questions. OPM’s Merit Hiring Plan directs agencies to drive down governmentwide hiring times to less than 80 days, on average. OPM data shows the governmentwide time-to-hire average was 101 days in fiscal 2024, and remained relatively unchanged in recent years.
Unions leading the lawsuit — American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and National Association of Government Employees — asked U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. in March to approve a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the inclusion of the essays question on job applications. O’Toole has yet to approve or deny that request.
According to the plaintiffs, Justice Department attorneys representing OPM have never attempted to defend the essay question on its merits, “nor do they identify any government purpose that it serves.”
“Instead, they have argued that the loyalty question is not problematic because they claim that it is optional and that applicants are not required to respond to it,” plaintiff attorneys wrote. “This argument has always been incorrect legally. It has now proven incorrect factually.”
The Trump administration released its Merit Hiring Plan in May 2025 to ensure that “only the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans are hired to the federal service.”
In follow-up guidance, however, OPM downplayed the importance of the essays as just one piece of a candidate’s overall application. The HR agency said it’s optional for job candidates to answer the essays, and that candidates won’t be disqualified from consideration if they skip them.
OPM’s guidance said the questions should not serve as an “ideological litmus test on candidates,” and that if an applicant does not answer the questions along with their application, they will not be disqualified or screened out.”
The Office of Special Counsel, in its response to a complaint filed last summer, determined that the Merit Hiring Plan’s optional hiring questions did not amount to a prohibited personnel practice, and that guidance from OPM ensured the questions do not constitute a loyalty test.
An OPM official told federal HR employees in a virtual training last summer that it was “optional” for job candidates to complete the essays, but “mandatory” for agencies to include them on applications.
Roseanna Ciarlante, director of OPM’s hiring experience group, told federal human resources officials in a June 2025 training session that hiring managers and agency leaders will review the essay responses when finalizing candidates for a job offer, adding that “this is a very specific priority for this administration to have this information, prior to making a final offer.”
“Us asking is mandatory. We have to include these questions, unless they’ve been specifically exempt. Applicants have the option to respond,” Ciarlante said in a recording of the session, obtained by Federal News Network. “I think some people thought when the guidance came out, it was optional. It’s not optional. We have to ask the questions, but it’s optional whether or not an applicant can choose to respond.”
Ciarlante said agencies are not required, but “encouraged to still use these questions,” when assessing candidates for promotions.
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