Education Department faces legal backlash after judge rules against partisan shutdown emails sent from employee accounts
A federal judge has ruled that the Department of Education violated employee rights by forcing furloughed staff to send partisan emails during the 2025 shutdown.
On November 7, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down a decision in favor of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union representing Department of Education staff. The union brought the case after the Department changed employees’ out-of-office email replies to include a partisan message – without their knowledge or consent.
As the government shutdown approached, Department of Education officials instructed furloughed employees to set up an automated out-of-office reply. The template provided was strictly nonpartisan, simply stating that the employee could not respond due to a lapse in appropriations and would reply when appropriations were enacted. This message was intended to keep communications neutral and professional during the period of uncertainty.
However, once employees lost access to their government email accounts, the Department made a sweeping change. The original out-of-office messages were replaced with a standardized auto-reply that blamed “Democrat Senators” for the shutdown. Employees were not notified of the change and had no way to alter the message, which was now being sent from their official accounts to anyone who...
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