by Fred Lucas
In another case of federal bureaucrats challenging elected leaders, seven employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who signed onto a public letter opposing President Donald Trump were eventually ousted. Now they’re suing to get their jobs back.
The terminated employees are suing with the backing of the litigation group Democracy Forward. Democrat lawyer Marc Elias is chairman of the board for Democracy Forward, which has filed numerous lawsuits advocating for the federal bureaucracy against elected leaders. Elias is best known for election litigation for Democrats, and for his role in pushing the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory.
The plaintiffs—three of them suing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and four suing in the Northern District of Illinois—assert the firings were unlawful because they were exercising their First Amendment rights on their own time. Claire Balani, Lane To, and Alexis Wright are suing the EPA in Washington, D.C., while Andreas Harris, Alexander Cole, Stephanie Eytcheson, and Anna Laird are suing in Illinois. The lawsuits were announced Tuesday.
The June 2025 public letter from the employees to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, coordinated by the liberal group Stand Up for Science, says it is a “Declaration of Dissent” from the Trump administration’s policies. The letter said the administration “dismantled” what it called “environmental justice,” stating, “Today, we stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise.”
“Since January 2025, federal workers across the country have been denigrated and dismissed based on false claims of waste, fraud, and abuse. Meanwhile, Americans have witnessed the unraveling of public health and environmental protections in the pursuit of political advantage. Today, we come directly to you, Administrator Zeldin and our elected officials, with the five concerns outlined below. We expect your deliberate consideration of these concerns and look forward to working with you to restore EPA’s credibility as a premier scientific institution. Communities across America are counting on you to lead EPA in carrying out its mission,” the letter says.
Stand Up for Science says it wants to “take back Congress,” but doesn’t openly support one party, only asserting it wants “pro-science” members. The group has sponsored rallies across the United States.
The seven were considered probationary employees, based on how long they worked for the EPA, meaning they didn’t yet have full civil service protection afforded to other federal employees and couldn’t appeal their removal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Democracy Forward notes that more than 100 agency employees signed the public letter criticizing the Trump administration’s policies, and more than 30 agency employees went without discipline because they were union representatives.
The letter says that climate issues disproportionately affect “vulnerable communities, including Black communities and other communities of color, poor communities, disabled communities, LGBTQIA+ communities, and historically overburdened and underserved rural and urban communities.”
The letter goes on to say, “In addition, your administration has fired or forced onto administrative leave several categories of employees, including those responsible for environmental justice and those managing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives.”
The fact that so many employees signed a politicized letter is part of a bigger problem with the federal bureaucracy, said Robert Moffit, former assistant director of the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal workforce.
“It is arrogant to assume one has the right to federal employment,” Moffit, now a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal.
“These employees don’t understand a simple fact of life: The president of the United States determines the policy of the executive branch,” Moffit continued. “If one can’t work to implement the president’s stated agenda, the right and honorable thing to do is resign and work in the private sector, where they will have a greater sense of personal fulfillment. They might even get a job at Democracy Forward.”
However, Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman contends that probationary federal government employees “have the constitutional right to participate in public discussion and debate.”
“[T]he government has no right to retaliate against these civil servants because of a protected opinion they expressed while off the clock,” Perryman said in a public statement. “We are honored to work with these brave plaintiffs to protect their First Amendment rights and to protect civil servants from this kind of anti-democratic attempt to punish people for protected speech.”
The law firm of James & Hoffman is also representing the federal employees.
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Fred Lucas is senior investigative reporter for the Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.”Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
