Federal workers union sues Education Department over altered shutdown emails 

A federal workers’ union is suing the Education Department after agency employees on furlough or administrative leave discovered that their automatic email replies had been changed to a message blaming Democratic lawmakers for the ongoing government shutdown. 

The complaint, filed by the American Federation of Government Employees on Friday, asks a court to prohibit the Education Department’s alleged efforts to “put political speech in federal employees’ mouths.” 

“Forcing civil servants to speak on behalf of the political leadership’s partisan agenda is a blatant violation of federal employees’ First Amendment rights,” the suit stated, adding that “employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration’s talking points with emails sent out in their names.” 

The suit came one day after some furloughed workers discovered that their automatic out-of-office email replies were changed without their knowledge, from neutral language to partisan messaging that blamed Democrats for the shutdown, which began last Wednesday. 

Prior to the shutdown, the agency sent workers suggested language for automatic email replies, but the messaging was “neutral” at the time, two furloughed employees told FedScoop. Agency workers mostly cut and pasted from that message when setting their messages, one of the employees said. But later in the week, the message changed and included partisan language mentioning Democrats. 

According to multiple screenshots obtained by FedScoop, the altered emails read: “Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democratic Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate, which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations, I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once the government functions resume.” 

The suit alleges that some department employees, who still had access to their government equipment, attempted to change their replies back to nonpartisan language, but the replies were later changed again to partisan language. 

“As part of their employment duties, many Department employees regularly use their government email accounts to communicate with school district representatives, college administrators, parents, students, vendors, and other external stakeholders,” the suit stated. “So long as the out-of-office messages remain up, members of the public who try to reach a Department of Education employee will receive as an auto-reply a partisan message blaming ‘Democrat Senators’ for their inability to respond.” 

“Making public statements with such partisan language is not an ordinary part of the job responsibilities of federal civil servants,” the suit added. 

The suit argued that the partisan messaging is a violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts most federal employees from engaging in partisan, political activities. Messaging around the shutdown has primarily centered on who is to blame for it, with both Democrats and Republicans pointing fingers at one another. 

Numerous agencies have promoted this partisan messaging on their official websites. A banner of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website, for example, states the “Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.” An image of the banner is cited in AFGE’s suit, along with screenshots of partisan messaging on the websites for the Small Business Administration and the Departments of Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, State and Health and Human Services. 

According to the suit, many employees on administrative leave had already set their out-of-office replies to state they were on leave. Two agency staffers who have been on administrative leave since March told FedScoop their automatic replies were switched to partisan messaging without their knowledge. 

“I believe that this is a gross misuse of the administration’s power and an obvious violation of the Hatch Act and First Amendment in which the department compelled speech,” one of the employees said Monday.

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. Madi Biedermann, the deputy assistant secretary of communications, sent FedScoop a statement last week: “The email reminds those who reach out to Department of Education employees that we cannot respond because Senate Democrats are refusing to vote for a clean CR and fund the government. Where’s the lie?”