(NEXSTAR) – Partisan messages recently posted to government websites have prompted complaints that several federal officials may have violated the Hatch Act, a law passed in 1939 to restrict certain political activities by federal employees.

“​The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation​​,” reads an overview posted by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee quickly sent a letter to the Special Counsel calling for an investigation into possible Hatch Act violations over language posted to the websites of the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The messages, which respectively blame “Senate Democrats” and “the Radical Left” for the shutdown and its effects on the American people, are still appearing on the sites weeks into the shutdown.

Public Citizen, a D.C.-based watchdog group, also filed a complaint with the (OSC) over the language on these government sites (

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