A federal judge ruled Friday that the Department of Education violated the First Amendment rights of some agency employees when it sent out-of-office messages on their behalf that blamed Democrats for the government shutdown.
The ruling from US District Judge Christopher Cooper is the latest court rebuke of controversial moves by the Trump administration during what has now become the longest shutdown in US history.
Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said the department had unconstitutionally compelled its employees’ speech when it tinkered with the out-of-office messages for furloughed workers so that they included language blaming the shutdown on “Democrat Senators” who “are blocking” passage of a “clean continuing resolution” that would fund the government.
News organizations have in-house usage rules for words, especially modern words that have evolving usage.
Email as a mass noun plural is correct usage, as in “this server handles a massive amount of email every day”. Emails can also be contextually correct as a plural, eg “I received hundreds of emails today”.
As the number of email edited by the department and sent out is being treated as a countable noun, this headline is definitely acceptable usage.