Donald Trump was elected president; he has every right to expect the executive branch to carry out his lawful policies.
A federal crane operator shouldn't have to prove he likes them first.
That question is now before the courts, after U.S. District Judge George O'Toole blocked the administration from continuing to use one part of its federal hiring program.
Applicants had been asked to explain how they would advance Trump's executive orders and policy priorities, and identify one or two initiatives that were personally significant to them.
The question appeared on more than 70,000 federal job postings, challengers say. It was used for positions ranging from air traffic control specialists and nuclear-materials courier to nurses, firefighters, scientists, and even a Department of Transportation crane operator.
From Reuters:
The unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, argued the question mandated by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) unlawfully politicized the hiring process for career government workers by attempting to assess their support for the Republican president.
O'Toole, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the question had been asked of applicants to positions ranging from an air traffic control specialist to a crane operator to a nuclear materials courier.
He said the unions' members reasonably interpreted it as an attempt to determine the applicants' political views, even though the Civil Service Reform Act bars making employment decisions for such jobs on the basis of political affiliation.
"The plaintiffs are thus likely to succeed in showing that there is no legitimate governmental interest in inquiring into the political beliefs of applicants to federal civil service vacancies," O'Toole wrote.
The judge halted the use of the question on grounds that it likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by infringing on speech rights under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
Lawyers for the unions at the liberal group Democracy Forward welcomed the ruling, saying that over 70,000 federal job postings had included the question, undermining what is supposed to be a merit-based hiring system.
"Requiring federal job applicants to answer politically motivated questions goes against the very nature of the nonpartisan civil service," AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement.
That's about where the policy loses me.
Trump should absolutely be able to choose Cabinet secretaries, agency heads, White House staff, and political appointees who believe in his agenda.
If officials determined to sabotage a president surround him, he can't govern.
Career civil service is different.
The person operating a crane needs to know how to operate a crane safely. An air traffic controller needs judgment, concentration, and technical competence. A nuclear materials courier needs reliability and discipline.
Whether any of them consider a particular executive order personally meaningful tells me very little about whether he or she can do the job.
The administration has a defense. OPM later clarified that applicants were encouraged, rather than required, to answer the essays, and that the responses weren't supposed to be scored.
The broader hiring plan also contains reforms conservatives should welcome, including shorter resumes, skills-based assessments, faster hiring, and greater emphasis on job performance.
Judge O'Toole still concluded that applicants could reasonably view the question as an inquiry into their political beliefs. Federal civil-service law bars hiring decisions based on political affiliation, and he found the challengers likely to succeed in arguing there was no legitimate government interest in probing those beliefs for ordinary career positions.
The ruling is preliminary. It doesn't mean Trump loses control of the executive branch, and it doesn't give career employees permission to ignore lawful orders. Federal workers work for an elected government; they're supposed to implement its legal policies whether they voted for the presidency or not.
That principle runs both ways.
Conservatives spent years watching federal bureaucracies become places where progressive politics too often seemed woven into hiring, training, and workplace culture.
We were right to object.
We shouldn't answer that problem by building our own version.
Hire people who can do the work, fire people who refuse to do it, and hold them accountable when they obstruct lawful policy.
But if the government needs a crane operator, ask him whether he can safely move 30 tons of steel.
His opinion of the president's executive orders can remain his own business.
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