Judge Orders ED Remove Partisan Out-of-Office Messages

A federal judge sided with the American Federation of Government Employees in its challenge to the Trump administration sending partisan, automated out-of-office messages from Department of Education employee emails, Politico reported Friday. 

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the agency to remove the messages, which blamed Democratic senators who are “blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate” for the shutdown, from all unionized employees’ emails. The responses violated the employees’ First Amendment rights, Cooper ruled. 

“Political officials are free to blame whomever they wish for the shutdown, 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,” Cooper wrote in his opinion. 

The decision also permanently blocks the department from including partisan speech in out-of-office messages of furloughed and laid-off employees. 

Cooper said he would order the agency to remove the partisan language from all employees’ emails “if it is technologically impossible” to remove it from unionized employees’ accounts only. 

Department officials distributed a standard out-of-office message to employees as the government shutdown began on Oct. 1. But hours later, they discovered that the email had been changed to include the partisan language without their consent.