Law.com featured Keker, Van Nest & Peters’ filing of a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s “loyalty question” on civil service job applications, a new requirement that asks candidates to explain how they would “help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities.”
The unprecedented application question asks applicants to identify one or two of President Trump's policy initiatives that “are significant to you” and explain how the applicant would help advance them if hired. The U.S. civil service has been nonpartisan and not focused on political loyalty for more than a century.
"When you start choosing people based on their political beliefs ... that's a patronage system,” said Keker partner Warren Braunig. “It's unconstitutional because it's punishing people based on their political beliefs."
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the suit targets the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), its director Scott Kupor, and the United States of America. Keker and co-counsels Democracy Forward Foundation and Protect Democracy represent three major government employee unions: the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE).
Despite the federal shutdown that has been the longest in U.S. history, the loyalty question has remained in use, appearing nearly 1,900 times on federal job listings since October 1. Braunig said it undermines the nonpartisan, merit-based foundation of the civil service and threatens public trust in government institutions.
"[W]hen you start to create a system in which we're going to be choosing people for federal jobs based on politics and their political beliefs, instead of whether they're the most qualified, that creates real risks for public safety and for the credibility of the government in the eyes of the people,” Braunig said.
The Keker team includes Warren Braunig, Charlotte Kamai, Cara Meyer, and Sara Fitzpatrick.
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