EPA Environmental Justice Staff Seeks Return to Work

For the past two months, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staff who had been assigned to work on environmental justice issues have been on paid administrative leave, with no agency access, and under orders not to conduct any official business. A legal complaint filed on their behalf by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) aims to reintegrate them into the EPA workforce with new assignments.

In one of his first flurries of Executive Orders this January, President Trump rescinded 30 years’ worth of executive actions directing EPA to address environmental justice concerns to reduce the disproportionate pollution burden on low-income and minority communities. Days later, EPA shut down its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and placed nearly 170 employees on administrative leave. While some have been brought back, many others remain on paid leave more than two months later with no official guidance on what comes next for them.

In a complaint filed with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel on behalf of all unassigned environmental justice staff, PEER argues they have been on administrative leave well beyond the statutory limit of no more than 10 days in any calendar year. In addition, the complaint contends the staff are being unfairly and illegally punished because of their prior legitimate assignments.

“EPA’s environmental justice staff has been consigned to internal exile through no fault of their own,” stated PEER Science Policy Director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with EPA. “EPA now treats environmental justice work as a stigma rather than valuable experience.”

Federal merit system principles state that employees cannot be discriminated against on the basis of extraneous issues which have no bearing on the job performance. Many of the environmental justice staff have backgrounds in engineering, public health, program management and specialties such as chemistry which have broad application within other EPA operations but are not allowed to do other work.

“Punishing whole classes of public servants on the basis of ideological bias is the opposite of what the merit system guarantees,” added PEER Staff Counsel Laura Dumais, who filed the complaint. “Each federal employee is entitled to individual consideration of their expertise and experience rather than the one-size-fits-all treatment here.”

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Read the PEER complaint:
Cover Letter
Attachment 1

Look at EPA’s past environmental justice work

See Trump’s abandonment of environmental justice