‘Sermonizing’ Easter email prompts USDA employees to sue agency

A group of Agriculture Department workers and the National Federation of Federal Employees union on Wednesday filed a lawsuit over an email to the agency’s workforce celebrating the Easter holiday sent by Secretary Brooke Rollins. 

Specifically, the plaintiffs objected to language in the communication that assumes the recipient is Christian such as: “Today we celebrate the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.”

“We work for the federal government, not a church. I just want to go to work and make my country better — I shouldn’t have to suffer through sermons and other religious messages forced upon me by the head of a federal agency,” said plaintiff Ethan Roberts, an atheist and Agricultural Research Service employee based out of Illinois, in a press release statement. “When the secretary sends an email, I have to read it. And when those emails are telling me what to believe, they make me feel unwelcome in an agency I’ve dedicated ten years to.”  

The lawsuit asks the courts to bar department officials from “continuing to send or otherwise communicate proselytizing Christian messages to USDA employees,” arguing that Rollins violated the First Amendment. 

“Secretary Rollins’s practice and policy of subjecting agency employees to proselytizing messages conveys the expectation that USDA employees share in the secretary’s religious beliefs, even when doing so would betray an employee’s own beliefs,” the attorneys wrote. “It is exactly the sort of government-sponsored religious coercion, religious sermonizing and denominational preference that the Establishment Clause prohibits.”

The lawsuit notes that Rollins, at the start of her tenure, referenced God in agencywide emails in a non-denominational manner (e.g. May God continue to protect the United States of America and may His favor shine over all her land) and that the secretary has never sent any messages acknowledging non-Christian religious holidays. 

Plaintiffs are represented by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State not-for-profit, Democracy Forward legal organization and Bryan Schwartz Law. 

In response to the lawsuit, a USDA spokesperson said in a statement to Government Executive that: “While we do not comment on pending litigation, we will keep the plaintiffs in our prayers during this process.”

The Office of Personnel Management in 2025 issued guidance reiterating that federal employees can seek to "persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” so long as they are “not harassing in nature.”

USDA is in the process of a reorganization that will relocate many employees away from the Washington, D.C., area.