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There's a fine line between actions that fall within a civil servant's right to express an opinion on a political candidate or issue, and those that could be found to violate a law prohibiting political activity while on duty or in a government office.

The agency charged with enforcing that law, called the Hatch Act, has shown that it won't hesitate in pursuing potential transgressions. This means that the careless click of a mouse or stroke of a key could put a federal employee distributing political messages from his or her government e-mail account out of a job.

The Office of Special Counsel has 12 active Hatch Act cases, and five are related to e-mails sent by federal employees. Hatch Act violations are resolved with a warning letter from the OSC. If the case is egregious, OSC brings the case before the Merit Systems Protection Board, where the presumed punishment is dismissal.

The agency, headed by Special Counsel Scott Bloch, is not shy to publicize these cases, and is appealing one that it lost. In that case, an MSPB administrative law judge ruled that sending political messages to a handful of co-workers using a government e-mail system is legal.

Those e-mails were sent to about two dozen people. One featured a photo of President Bush in front of an American flag with the statement, "I vote the Bible," and the other stated, "Why I am supporting John Kerry for president?"

Bloch said in an interview with Government Executive that the uncrossable line is the distribution of "an e-mail to however many people that constitutes engaging in political activity in a federal building on duty."

"That would be leafleting or electioneering," Bloch said.

Bloch said he is hesitant to draw too many concrete lines but he feels pretty safe in stating that forwarding something like a JibJab skit would be seen as funny and more in the line of bipartisan political satire.

"It certainly has a political flavor to it, but it is not defined as political activity," Bloch said. "If you're talking about kidding around or telling the latest jokes about somebody, or handing an opinion piece written by someone, those are of a different order [than] trying to hurt someone's chances of election or trying to help your candidate in their chances for election."

Despite the potential for some flexibility in the enforcement of the law, William Rudman, an attorney who specializes in federal employment law and a former Defense deputy undersecretary, said federal employees sending political e-mails should "knock it off."

"There's no right to privacy in the government e-mail," Rudman said. "People are doing with e-mail what they would never do with a memo ... don't do it anymore and just try to stay below the radar and hope they don't notice."

Rudman said the OSC's prosecution of e-mail related violations of the Hatch Act is like "shooting fish in a barrel."

"It is part of the general imbecility of people and e-mail," Rudman said. "People don't seem to realize that e-mail will do them in. Agencies are doing keyword searches. You can't erase stuff."

The case being appealed to the full MSBP board, involving Michael Davis and Leslye Sims of the Social Security Administration's Kansas City, Mo., regional office, has not established a precedent since it was resolved by an administrative judge and has been challenged to the full board. According to Rudman, the board has been very hostile to federal employees.

Whether or not Davis and Sims survive the OSC's prosecution, the risk of writing politically charged e-mails is not worth it to the average civil servant, Rudman said.

"The problem is that there is no red line," Rudman said. "Whether or not that judge's decision holds or not, do you want to go through all this?"

In two other publicized cases, MSPB ruled against federal employees that OSC had prosecuted for e-mail Hatch Act violations.

In November, an administrative law judge ordered Jeffrey Eisinger of the Small Business Administration to be fired for using his government e-mail account for political work for the Green Party in California. Eisinger says he will appeal the case to the full board.

More recently a MSPB judge recommended an unpaid 60-day suspension for Navy employee Rocky Morrill, who sent an e-mail to more than 300 co-workers asking them to attend a party for a member of Congress seeking reelection.

Elaine Kaplan, Bloch's predecessor as special counsel, said strange lines are being drawn regarding the e-mail-related Hatch Act prosecutions

Kaplan said when she was special counsel, her intention was not to terrify employees from talking politics over e-mail. Only messages used for formal campaign activities -- akin to leafleting -- would be prosecutable, she said.

"What has been created is an atmosphere of fear of expressing political views," said Kaplan, now a lawyer for the National Treasury Employees Union. "We're talking about chit-chat here. Everybody communicates like that through e-mail."

NTEU filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the full board should uphold the administrative judge's decision in the Kansas City case.

People suspect the worst about OSC, according to Kaplan, "when it plays gotcha with employees whose worst offense, if any, is exchanging dopey e-mails with their colleagues about political issues of the day."

NTEU President Colleen Kelley said that the union feels OSC is overzealous in pursuing e-mail-related Hatch Act cases.

"Federal employees don't give up their rights to have a personal opinion on political matters," Kelley said. "The special counsel is going after these trivial cases to frighten employees from participating in political activity."

But Bloch said the federal workplace must remain free of all undue influence and is no place for partisan campaign activity.

"The fact is that we live in an era where technology gives us many opportunities for rapid communication," Bloch said. "You can encourage your co-worker to vote for a political candidate and with the blink of the eye, it could be thousands of people. The Hatch Act remains an important principle regardless of the technology."