New Lawsuits Challenge Unlawful Retaliatory Firings at Environmental Protection Agency

Seven civil servants at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are challenging their unlawful firing in parallel lawsuits, alleging that their retaliatory dismissal violated their First Amendment rights. The former federal employees were signatories to a public letter declaring opposition to the Trump-Vance administration’s destructive agenda, and though each signed the letter on personal time and in their personal capacities, EPA leadership ignored internal legal advice and dismissed the employees in retaliation for their First Amendment-protected speech. 

The seven employees bringing the suits – Claire Balani, Lane To, Alexis Wright, Andreas Harris, Alexander Cole, Stephanie Eytcheson, and Anna Laird– each joined more than 100 colleagues in June 2025 in signing a public letter coordinated by “Stand Up for Science” that spoke out against the politicization of the EPA, the erosion of science-based decisionmaking at the agency, and attacks on the career civil service by agency leadership. The EPA subsequently suspended and then fired each employee, even though EPA’s Ethics Office concluded that “there is no ethics concern” and that “the employees [who signed the Declaration of Dissent] are simply exercising their first amendment rights to express their opinions and… are not intentionally misusing their federal positions to bolster their opinions.” The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward and James & Hoffman, P.C.

“Free speech is one of the foundational values of this country, and it applies to federal employees just like everyone else–we all have the right to express our opinions about government policies. But in this case, the EPA decided that respecting the First Amendment was less important than protecting its thin-skinned leaders from criticism. The agency never should have fired our clients, and we will ask the courts to reverse this unconstitutional and un-American action,” said Danny Rosenthal, partner at James & Hoffman.

Each of the seven employees was considered “probationary” based on the timing of their hire, which deprives them of the legal right to appeal their terminations to the Merit Systems Protection Board. By comparison, more than thirty employees who signed the letter were assigned no discipline because they were union representatives, making clear that the punishment was unlawfully determined by expected push-back, not with regard to any assessment of potential disruption to EPA’s operations caused by signing the letter. Balani, To, and Wright brought their challenge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; and Harris, Cole, Eytcheson, and Laird brought their challenge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. 

“Probationary federal government employees, like all people in America, have the constitutional right to participate in public discussion and debate in their personal capacities, even when their speech is critical of the government, and the government has no right to retaliate against these civil servants because of a protected opinion they expressed while off the clock,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “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 cases are _Balani et al v EPA _and Harris et al v EPA, and the legal team at Democracy Forward working on the matter includes Jyoti Jasrasaria, Tsuki Hoshijima, and Elena Goldstein. The legal team at James & Hoffman includes Danny Rosenthal, Charlotte Schwartz, and Eric Essagof.

To read the complaints filed today, please click here and here. 

For more resources for civil servants facing retaliatory dismissal, please visit https://www.civilservicestrong.org/. 

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_Democracy Forward Foundation is a national legal organization that advances democracy and social progress through litigation, policy, public education, and regulatory engagement. For more information, please visit www.democracyforward.org. _