Public Citizen just filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the Trump regime from violating the free speech rights of federal workers.
This is our 19th lawsuit against the administration since Trump returned to power.
Public Citizen and Democracy Forward are representing the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) — the country’s largest federal worker union — in this lawsuit.
Here’s more about the case:
- As a result of a government shutdown brought about by Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, hundreds of thousands of government employees are currently not working.
- Naturally, many of these workers set up an “out-of-office” auto-reply email before being furloughed. (We’re guessing just about everyone reading this has received an “out-of-office” email or two, or thousand, over the years.)
- But at Trump’s Department of Education — which, remember, is being run by the billionaire former professional wrestling magnate and MAGA extremist Linda McMahon — employees’ “out-of-office” replies were replaced with a partisan message blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
- The change was made without consent from the employees and without notice that partisan messages were being sent in their names. In essence, these workers are being forced to make a political statement, whether they agree with it or not.
The government putting words in your mouth that you don’t want to speak violates the First Amendment.
As Cormac Early, the lead Public Citizen lawyer on the case, told the national media: “It is profoundly offensive for the government to commandeer federal employees’ voices for partisan purposes. Government workers have a First Amendment right not to be conscripted as political mouthpieces against their will.”
Inserting partisan messaging into employees’ work emails would also appear to be a blatant violation of a law called the Hatch Act, which makes it illegal for government workers to use government resources to espouse political viewpoints. The regime is doing something similar by posting messages on numerous agency websites blaming the shutdown on Democrats. Public Citizen has filed 11 complaints (so far) with federal officials over these violations of the Hatch Act.
The Trump regime’s egregious violations of federal workers’ free speech rights and the Hatch Act are getting widespread media coverage — from ABC, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, The Independent, NBC, The New York Times, NPR, Politico, USA Today, Wired, and many, many others.
MORE ABOUT TAKING THE TRUMP REGIME TO COURT
The Trump administration is unilaterally, unconstitutionally, and unlawfully dismantling the federal government — our government — from Cabinet-level departments that have their own stately buildings here in Washington, D.C., to smaller agencies that go largely unnoticed as they do the routine, unheralded work that makes for a functioning country.
Public Citizen is doing everything we can — within our modest means — to fight back at every turn. It’s David and Goliath for sure, but we will never back down. Even where we haven’t (yet) notched definitive victories in court, we are slowing down the regime and making it work a lot harder in pursuit of its desire for absolute power.
This “out-of-office” email case is just one of the 19 lawsuits we have filed (so far) against the administration since Trump returned to power. Are these lawsuits alone enough to fully defeat Trump and MAGA? Of course not. But are they a meaningful part of the pushback needed to collectively save our country? No doubt about it.
What you and Public Citizen are doing together matters. What hundreds of other organizations, big and small, are doing matters. What millions upon millions of our fellow Americans are doing matters. We believe that to our core. We take solace in that. And we draw inspiration from that. We hope you do, too.
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For progress,
- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
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