diff --git a/.gitea/workflows/audit-force-merge.yml b/.gitea/workflows/audit-force-merge.yml
index 899198275..a8d4d9d68 100644
--- a/.gitea/workflows/audit-force-merge.yml
+++ b/.gitea/workflows/audit-force-merge.yml
@@ -52,8 +52,13 @@ jobs:
           # Declared here rather than fetched from /branch_protections
           # because that endpoint requires admin write — sop-tier-bot is
           # read-only by design (least-privilege).
+          #
+          # E2E workflows (e2e-api, handlers-postgres-integration) are
+          # intentionally omitted: each job has `continue-on-error: true`
+          # per RFC §1 contract, so they always report success to branch
+          # protection and cannot meaningfully gate merges. Including them
+          # would cause false force-merge positives (issue #1739 / mc#1739).
           REQUIRED_CHECKS: |
             CI / all-required (pull_request)
-            E2E API Smoke Test / E2E API Smoke Test (pull_request)
-            Handlers Postgres Integration / Handlers Postgres Integration (pull_request)
+            sop-checklist / all-items-acked (pull_request)
         run: bash .gitea/scripts/audit-force-merge.sh