Judge says Education Dept partisan out-of-office emails violated First Amendment

I find partisan messaging on government sites to be sleazy. But also I don’t understand how this is a violation of government employees’ rights. When people are employees of the government, they don’t have rights to use the resources of their job as if they own the same resources as a private citizen. Their speech is restricted to some degree as part of doing their job, and they are employed to do their agency’s bidding. How is their private right to free speech violated here?

This is not a case where the government is telling employees that they cannot say certain things while on the job. That would be reasonable (see the Hatch Act, for instance, which the Trump administration violates constantly). It is compelled speech. They are sending out a message from that person without that person's knowledge or consent. The first amendment prohibits the government from forcing someone to say something that they do not want to say. That is true even for government employees (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_v._AFSCME)

> Their speech is restricted to some degree as part of doing their job

There are at least two kinds of speech restriction - not being allowed to say something, and being compelled to say something. To analogize, it's one thing to be told "you're not allowed to rant about the CEO on social media". It's another thing entirely to be told "you have to make 3 posts a day about how great the CEO is".

These federal employees were not just restricted from publicly criticizing the administration - which is fairly typical for federal employees - but they also had their out of office messages changed without consent to point partisan blame for the current shutdown. That's essentially compelled speech, especially since Out Of Office messages still include the employee's name as the From line.

> It's another thing entirely to be told "you have to make 3 posts a day about how great the CEO is".

This is perfectly legal and not a violation of any rights. Companies literally have entire departments dedicated to promotion of their products. If you say "I hate this product and don't want to work on promoting it" you will just be fired for refusing to do your job.

The rules are different for the government. Protection for private employees are weaker. The government has the force of law (literally force) on its side, so what it is allowed to do is different. A private company cannot truly compel an employee because the employment contract is at-will: either side can terminate the arrangement without cause.

By that same logic the government can't truly compel either as long as they only fire the employee. Obviously the government would be in violation of 1A if they took it further by charging the employee with a crime.

When people are hired into a job it is with the generally explicit expectation of certain job duties listed in the job description. This forms a very basic contract as to what they're hired to do. While they can be fired for not doing something else that's suddenly assigned to them, at least in "at will" states, they would have the right to collect unemployment for such a firing, as the new requirement is explicitly not their job! In other words, the firing would not be for (legal) cause.

But sure, many people do take PR jobs, where the general job duties include making the company (and by extension its officers) look good. Such a person could be fired for cause if they didn't want to make posts about how great the CEO is, and would generally be ineligible for unemployment.