In a landmark decision handed down on Friday, November 7, 2025, a federal judge ruled that the Department of Education violated the First Amendment rights of hundreds of its employees by sending out-of-office email messages blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown. The ruling, delivered by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, marks a significant rebuke of the Trump administration's approach during what has become the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, according to CNN and Beritaja.
The controversy began when, as the government prepared for a shutdown, Department of Education employees were instructed to create out-of-office messages for use during their furlough. The department provided a standard template, which simply stated: "We are unable to respond to your request due to a lapse in appropriations for the Department of Education. We will respond to your request once appropriations are enacted. Thank you." However, on the very first day of the shutdown, the department's deputy chief of staff for operations overrode these individualized messages, replacing them with a new, highly partisan autoreply. The message read: "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."
This replacement message, written in the first person, was sent from the accounts of furloughed employees, many of whom later told Beritaja that they neither wrote nor approved the language. Worse yet, they were not informed that their own carefully crafted, nonpartisan out-of-office messages would be replaced. The partisan message squarely blamed "Democrat Senators" for the shutdown, a move that immediately drew criticism from both employees and their union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). AFGE Local 252, which represents many Education Department workers, filed suit, arguing that the administration had overstepped its bounds and trampled on the constitutional rights of civil servants.
Judge Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, did not mince words in his decision. "Nonpartisanship is the bedrock of the federal civil service; it ensures that career government employees serve the public, not the politicians," he wrote, as reported by CNN. "But by commandeering its employees’ e-mail accounts to broadcast partisan messages, the Department chisels away at that foundation." He continued, "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."
In his ruling, Judge Cooper permanently barred the administration from "modifying furloughed employees’ out-of-office e-mail messages to include partisan speech" for all members of the AFGE, which represents more than 2,000 workers at the Department of Education. He further ordered the department to immediately restore employees' personalized out-of-office messages. If restoration was not possible, the department would be required to remove the partisan content from all employee accounts, regardless of union membership, according to Beritaja.
Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, expressed relief and vindication following the decision. "This ridiculous ploy by the Trump administration was a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of the workers at the Education Department," she said in a statement published by Beritaja. Gittleman added that it was "one of the many ways the Department’s leadership has threatened, harassed and demoralized these hardworking public servants in the past 10 months."
The partisan message itself was defended at the time by Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Education. In a statement to Beritaja, Biedermann said, "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?" However, Judge Cooper's ruling made clear that regardless of the factual basis for the message, the act of compelling nonpolitical employees to disseminate partisan viewpoints was unconstitutional.
Judge Cooper's decision also referenced the Hatch Act of 1939, a cornerstone of federal employment law. The Hatch Act was enacted to protect federal employees from political coercion and to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan manner. "Nonpartisanship is the foundation of the federal civil-service system," Cooper wrote, echoing the Act's intent as described by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel: to guarantee that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion. By inserting partisan blame into the official communications of career employees, the Department of Education, in Cooper’s view, had not only overstepped its constitutional limits but had also violated the spirit and letter of the Hatch Act.
This ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions pushing back against controversial moves by the Trump administration during the shutdown. While political officials retain the right to express partisan opinions, the court found that using federal employees as unwilling mouthpieces crosses a constitutional line. As Cooper wrote in his opinion, "When government employees enter public service, they do not sign away their First Amendment rights, and they surely do not sign up to be a mouthpiece for any given administration’s partisan views."
The Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment from Beritaja regarding the court's decision. Meanwhile, the ruling has been widely interpreted as a strong affirmation of the importance of nonpartisanship in the federal workforce—a principle that, while sometimes tested by the pressures of modern politics, remains enshrined in law and tradition.
For the thousands of Department of Education employees affected, the ruling is a clear signal that their voices—and their rights—cannot be appropriated for political gain. As the government shutdown drags on, the decision stands as a reminder that the boundaries between public service and political messaging must remain firm, no matter how contentious the times.
