The largest federal labor union sued the Education Department on Friday, accusing it of a free speech violation by inserting language into employees’ emails blaming the government shutdown on Democrats.

The American Federation of Government Employees said the automatic email rewrites force employees to adopt the president’s own language and “makes a mockery” of the Hatch Act, which limits employees’ engagement in political campaign activities.

“Without giving notice to their employees, let alone obtaining their consent, the Department of Education has replaced employees’ out-of-office email messages with partisan language that blames ’Democrat Senators’ for the shutdown. Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration’s talking points with emails sent out in their names,” the union said in the lawsuit filing in federal court in Washington.

The federal government entered the shutdown on Wednesday after Congress failed to pass spending legislation to keep operations going into the new fiscal year.

Many services remain intact, including law enforcement and other essential jobs, but national parks have closed their entrances, and hundreds of thousands of civil servants are home without pay as their jobs go undone.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have passed a “clean” funding bill through the House, which would keep the government operating at current levels while lawmakers hash out a new agreement. Senate Democrats filibustered to block that bill, insisting that the government shouldn’t be funded unless they can add tens of billions of dollars in new spending for health care, even for illegal immigrants.

The Trump administration has been particularly aggressive in using government systems to place blame.

“The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government,” reads the website at the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Justice Department’s website contains a banner: “Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated.”

The Education Department went further, according to the lawsuit, by automatically altering employees’ out-of-office message scripts to insert “partisan rhetoric.”

One version read: “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.”

AFGE said the term “Democrat senators” is “pejorative.”

And the union said structuring the message in the first person suggests the words came from the employee.

“Our union will not stand silent while President Trump and his political puppets blatantly violate the law in yet another assault on federal workers’ rights,” said AFGE President Everett Kelley.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.