Court Slaps Sock Puppet Emails Out Of Trump's Bruised Hand

Civil servants have First Amendment rights.

On Friday, a federal court in Washington DC ordered the Department of Education to quit pirating furloughed employees’ out-of-office emails to blame “Democrat Senators” for the shutdown.

“When government employees enter into 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,” Judge Christopher Cooper wrote, chastising the Department for abusing federal workers who are going without pay during the longest shutdown in history.

The ruling is yet another example of trial courts doing their best to beat back the depredations of the Trump administration, even as the Supreme Court has tied one hand behind their backs.

Bait and Switch

On the eve of the federal government shutdown, Department of Education employees were instructed to set an out-of-office email auto-reply. Supervisors supplied a nonpartisan, neutral template explaining that employees would be “unable to respond to your request due to a lapse in appropriations” but would “respond to your request when appropriations are enacted.” So far, so normal.

Once those employees were were out the door, though, Deputy Chief of Staff Chase Forrester, replaced their individually tailored messages with an explicitly partisan auto-reply:

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.

Because those employees were furloughed, most were locked out of email and were powerless to change their out-of-office replies. A handful of employees did manage to get in and restore the non-partisan template, only to find that the Department immediately changed it back to the “Democrat Senators” message.

On October 3, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) sued the Department for “unlawfully compelling agencies and civil servants across the federal government to engage in political rhetoric to serve the interests of the governing party.” Calling the messages “pernicious,” AFGE asked the court to “enjoin and declare unlawful the Department of Education’s effort to put political speech in federal employees’ mouths.”

A few days later, the Department slightly tweaked the out-of-office notification. Now it reads:

The Department employee you have contacted is currently in furlough status. 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. The employee you have contacted will respond to emails once government functions resume.

The government argued that, by changing the message from the first person (“Thank you for contacting me”) to the third person (“The Department employee you have contacted…”), the message was magically transformed from impermissible compelled speech to protected government speech. Members of the public would associate the content of the message with the government and not the individual employee, they insisted (presumably while scratching their eyebrows with their middle fingers).