The Trump administration infringed on Department of Education (DOE) workers’ rights when it changed employees’ out-of-office email signatures to display partisan messages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown, a federal judge ruled on Friday.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said in an order that the DOE cannot require federal workers to promote partisan language after the Trump administration changed employees’ emails to contain such language.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), represented by the Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group, sent a cease and desist letter and filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last month.
The suit stated that after DOE employees set up automatic out-of-office replies using a department-provided sample email that did not use partisan language, the language in their messages had been changed after they lost access to their email accounts.
The out-of-office replies were modified to say: “Thank you for contacting me. 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. Due to the lapse in appropriations, I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.”
In his order, Cooper noted that the case falls within a “seldom-traversed intersection of two First Amendment doctrines: the prohibition on compelled speech and the free speech rights of public employees.”
The Trump administration argued that changing automated responses attributed to employees does not compel the speech of its employees but instead conveys the department’s own speech.
Cooper said that while the department can blame Democrats for the shutdown, it cannot use its employees to do so.
“When government employees enter public service, they do not sign away their First Amendment rights, and they certainly do not sign up to be a billboard for any given administration’s partisan views,” Cooper wrote.
The judge ruled that DOE must change automated out-of-office emails back to what employees originally wrote, and that the department’s “conduct … must cease.”
“Nonpartisanship is the bedrock of the federal civil service; it ensures that career government employees serve the public, not the politicians. But by commandeering its employees’ e-mail accounts to broadcast partisan messages, the Department chisels away at that foundation,” Cooper wrote.
DOE’s automated response to MeriTalk’s request for comment on the ruling reads the same as that included in court documents.