Copyright The New York Times
A federal district judge in Washington ruled on Friday that the Trump administration had violated the constitutional rights of furloughed federal workers by using their work email accounts to send partisan messages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. In a 36-page ruling, Judge Christopher R. Cooper, an Obama appointee to the U.S. District Court in Washington, said the Education Department had infringed on the First Amendment rights of its employees when it commandeered their official email accounts to attack “Democrat Senators” — a pejorative term for Democratic lawmakers — over the shutdown. “Nonpartisanship is the bedrock of the federal Civil Service,” wrote Judge Cooper, who had approved President Trump’s plan to fire tens of thousands of federal employees this year. “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 ruling, which ordered the government to remove the partisan messaging from employees’ out-of-office email replies, came as a blow to an effort coordinated through the White House to use nominally nonpartisan federal agencies to exert political pressure on Democratic lawmakers, who are pushing to extend health care subsidies in exchange for voting to reopen the government. Official websites and social media accounts across the federal government have blasted out similar partisan attacks declaring that Democrats or the “radical left” were to blame for the disruption of government services. Several banner messages on government websites said that “President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people.” Though Judge Cooper made note of that “politically charged language,” the case focused on the email replies sent from the accounts of furloughed Education Department employees. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, had sued to have the email messages taken down. Judge Cooper said the Education Department’s partisan attacks had “added insult to injury” for federal workers who were sent home without pay. “The department waited until its furloughed employees lost access to their email, then gratuitously changed their out-of-office messages to include yet another partisan message, thereby turning its own work force into political spokespeople through their official email accounts,” Judge Cooper wrote. He concluded that the Education Department had “overplayed its hand,” writing that the agency had infringed on its employees rights “by unlawfully compelling its employees’ speech.” The messages had amounted to a remarkable breach for federal agencies and their typically nonpartisan work force, which normally do not get involved in politics. The Trump administration’s effort to wield government platforms to attack Democrats may also violate the Hatch Act, a law intended to ensure that the federal work force operates free of political influence or coercion, federal employment experts say. Public interest and ethics groups quickly filed official Hatch Act complaints about the partisan attacks, though the Trump administration has recently moved to weaken enforcement of the law, which is coordinated through the Office of Special Counsel. Mr. Trump withdrew his nominee to head that agency last month after Politico reported that he had sent a series of racist text messages, including telling a group of fellow Republicans that he had “a Nazi streak.”
