Education Department violated workers’ rights with partisan email replies, judge rules
The Department of Education cannot use partisan messaging in employees’ out-of-office replies during the ongoing government shutdown, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the agency “infringed upon its employees’ First Amendment rights” when it changed language in their automatic replies from neutral messaging about the shutdown to text that blamed Democrats for the work stoppage.
The changed automatic replies said the following: “The Department employee you have contacted is currently in furlough status. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. The employee you have contacted will respond to emails once government functions resume.”
In interviews with FedScoop shortly after the email change was made, two furloughed Education Department employees expressed shock that their words were altered without their knowledge and concern that they’d be implicated in Hatch Act violations.
“This administration feels like a huge weight every single day,” one of those staffers told FedScoop. “You’d think in a shutdown that would ease and we’d wait to return to normal. That’s not the case. I never thought an OOO message would induce stress, anxiety or fear.”
Said the other furloughed Education staffer: “I’ve worked for four administrations and have had great direct leadership in all of them, never been made to feel like I was being asked to break a law. I take the Hatch Act seriously and think that it is one of several things that ensure a corps of career federal staff that conduct themselves with integrity.”
Judge Cooper appeared sympathetic to those concerns in his ruling to grant summary judgment to the plaintiffs — the American Federation of Government Employees — and deny a cross-motion request for summary judgment by the government.
“Nonpartisanship is the bedrock of the federal civil service; it ensures that career government employees serve the public, not the politicians,” Cooper wrote. “But by commandeering its employees’ e-mail accounts to broadcast partisan messages, the Department chisels away at that foundation.
“Political officials are free to blame whomever they wish for the shutdown,” he continued, “but they cannot use rank-and-file civil servants as their unwilling spokespeople. The First Amendment stands in their way. The Department’s conduct therefore must cease.”
Everett Kelley, national president of the AFGE, celebrated the ruling, saying in a statement that the “Trump-Vance administration’s use of official government resources to spread partisan messaging using employees’ email was an unprecedented violation of the First Amendment, and the court’s ruling makes clear that even this administration is not above the law.”
The AFGE was represented by Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group. Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the former, said in a statement that the ruling represented “a major victory for the constitutional rights of the people who serve our country.”
“No administration — of any party — can commandeer public servants’ identities and force them to push partisan propaganda,” she added. Friday’s “decision makes it clear that civil servants are not a political tool, and it reinforces a fundamental principle: our federal workforce serves the public, not political agendas.”
