Fired EPA dissenters sue for reinstatement, alleging First Amendment violations

More than half a dozen former Environmental Protection Agency staffers, fired last summer over their participation in an open letter criticizing agency leadership, sued last month over their removal, alleging illegal retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights.

In June 2025, hundreds of EPA employees signed an open “declaration of dissent” addressed to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, criticizing him for abandoning science and environmental justice efforts and instilling a “culture of fear” at the agency. In response, EPA suspended 150 employees who signed the letter by name in their personal capacities, eventually meting out punishments from letters of reprimand through termination.

Twenty employees ultimately were fired for their role in signing the dissent letter. While the majority have begun pursuing appeals before the Merit Systems Protection Board, seven lack that avenue as they were fired while still on their one-year probationary period, before most civil service protections vest.

Across two lawsuits, one filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., and another for eastern Illinois, the seven former probationary workers accuse EPA leadership of ignoring both the advice of legal counsel and the results of an investigation into the letter—which found none of the employees signed it while at work or using agency resources—to retaliate against them.

“The speech at issue did not disrupt the workplace, impede plaintiffs’ ability to do their work, or harm the mission of the agency,” they wrote. “The agency had no evidence of any such disruption or harm when it decided to terminate plaintiffs. Instead, the agency’s own investigation concluded that there was no interference with plaintiffs’ work. Nevertheless, the agency selected plaintiffs for termination—not based on any assessment of the impact of their conduct on the agency, but rather because they lacked the right to appeal their terminations to the Merit Systems Protection Board.”

Ordinarily, probationary employees seeking to appeal their termination must instead go to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to request an investigation. The seven employees said they did so last December but implied that the office has informally tabled any investigation.

“Plaintiffs’ counsel discussed the complaint with the OSC investigator via email and phone on numerous occasions, including phone calls on December 19, 2025; January 28, 2026; February 23, 2026; April 24, 2026; and May 18, 2026,” the lawsuit states. “[During] the calls, the investigator indicated that OSC was investigating plaintiffs’ complaints but that he could not provide details regarding the steps taken in the investigation or a timeline for its completion . . . As of the filing of this lawsuit, it has been nearly seven months since plaintiffs filed their OSC complaints. Plaintiffs have received no indication from OSC of whether it intends to seek corrective action on their behalf.”

A group of 22 Democratic senators lent their support to the fired staffers’ cause last month, urging Zedlin in a letter to reinstate them due to the “lack of any evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever.”

“In early April, E&E News reported that an EPA personnel lawyer warned EPA political management that disciplining the employees for speaking out would trample their First Amendment rights,” they wrote. “EPA leadership pursued discipline anyway. When the legal investigation into these employees failed to produce a valid case, the agency resorted to a vague charge of ‘conduct unbecoming of a federal employee’ to justify retaliation against an employee for speaking out.”