A federal judge ruled Friday, November 7, 2025, that the Education Department violated employees’ First Amendment rights by inserting partisan blame into their out-of-office emails during the government shutdown. The court ordered the department to remove the partisan language from union members’ messages and permanently barred similar modifications.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper issued the decision in Washington, D.C., finding that the department infringed on employees’ free-speech rights when it unilaterally changed their auto-replies to fault “Democrat Senators” for the shutdown. “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.
According to the court’s opinion and order, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) sued after Education Department officials replaced workers’ personalized out-of-office notices with a standardized message blaming Senate Democrats for the funding lapse. The judge granted AFGE’s motion for summary judgment, declared the changes unconstitutional, directed the department to remove the partisan language from accounts of AFGE members, and permanently enjoined the agency from inserting partisan speech into the out-of-office messages of furloughed staff or employees on administrative leave. He also required a prompt status report certifying compliance. Reuters reported that the judge said he would extend the fix to all employee accounts if necessary to ensure compliance.
The dispute traces to late September 2025, when the department told employees likely to be furloughed to prepare out-of-office replies using neutral template language: “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 when appropriations are enacted. Thank you.” On October 1, the first day of the shutdown, the department’s deputy chief of staff for operations overrode those messages with a partisan version that read in part: “Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 … which has led to a lapse in appropriations.” Employees later learned the changes were made without their knowledge or consent.
Multiple employees told NPR they did not author the partisan message, which appeared to be written in the first person. After the union objected, the department revised the auto-reply into third person but kept the partisan blame. That tweak did not satisfy the court, which concluded the revised language still compelled employees to convey political messaging against their will.
At the time the messages surfaced, Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, defended the language in a statement to NPR: “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?” Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, called the department’s approach “a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of the workers at the Education Department” and one of many ways leadership had “threatened, harassed and demoralized these hardworking public servants in the last 10 months,” according to NPR.
In his opinion, Cooper emphasized that “nonpartisanship is the bedrock of the federal civil service,” noting Congress codified that principle in the Hatch Act. The department did not respond to NPR’s request for comment on the ruling.
