A lawsuit challenging a past policy blocking federal employees from using terms like “resistance” and advocating for former President Donald Trump’s impeachment while on the job looks to be all but dead in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, as a panel of judges repeatedly questioned whether the case was still live.

Attorneys with Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer and American Oversight in 2019 sued on behalf of the American Federation of Government Employees over the Office of Special Counsel advisory opinion, which warned government staffers that such talk in the course of their federal employment would violate the Hatch Act. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis last year dismissed the suit, finding it was premature to challenge the policy without any actual alleged violations in the record.