Trump Sued Over Partisan Out-Of-Office Emails Amid Shutdown: 'Beyond Outrageous'

A labor union and public-interest legal groups sued the Trump administration on Friday for inserting partisan language into federal employees’ out-of-office replies during the government shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents some 800,000 federal workers, also sent a cease-and-desist letter to the administration demanding it put an end to the political messaging in workers’ autoreplies at the Education Department.

“Federal employees already are suffering financially by going without a salary,” Everett Kelley, the union’s president, said in a statement. “Now the administration has directly and deliberately violated the First Amendment rights of furloughed workers.”

After government funding lapsed, furloughed workers across the federal government were instructed, per usual, to set up out-of-office replies during the shutdown. But last Thursday, employees inside the Education Department realized their nonpartisan replies had been altered so that the messages blamed Democrats for the funding lapse, an agency worker confirmed to HuffPost.

Workers did not consent to having their replies changed to the new partisan language, which was first reported by NBC News. Many felt they were being used to violate the Hatch Act, which limits political activities by federal employees.

The lawsuit says the political language in the emails amounts to “compelled speech” by the government.

″[The administration has] no legitimate interest in forcing Department employees to recite partisan words that they would not have spoken otherwise,” the lawsuit states.

It was one of several instances in which officials within Donald Trump’s administration used out-of-office replies to politicize the shutdown — despite warnings from government watchdogs that doing so was unethical and perhaps illegal. HuffPost reported last week that workers within the Department of Health and Human Services were told to set up autoreplies and provided language attributing the shutdown to Democrats.

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The administration also posted partisan messages on official government websites and took advantage of a national newsletter for veterans to say the shutdown was all Democrats’ fault.

Democracy Forward, one of the legal groups that brought the lawsuit over the Education Department autoreplies, said the administration was using government resources to try to shift blame for the shutdown because Trump was losing the messaging fight. Early polls show Americans are more likely to blame Republicans for the funding lapse.

“Posting messages without consent to broadcast messages on behalf of a partisan agenda is a blatant violation of First Amendment rights,” Skye Perryman, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Even for an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the Constitution and rule of law, this is beyond outrageous.”

The shutdown will enter its second full week Wednesday unless Trump and congressional leaders can agree on a funding deal. Democrats, who are in the minority but hold enough seats in the Senate to filibuster a bill, are demanding that Republicans extend subsidies for Americans who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.