SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
peer
'Truth Is Not a Fireable Offense': Former EPA Staffers File Legal Challenge Over Terminations by Trump
“Federal employees have the right to speak out on matters of public concern in their personal capacities, even when they do so in dissent,” said one of the lawyers representing the fired workers.
Dec 03, 2025
Six former employees of the US Environmental Protection Agency filed a First Amendment challenge in court on Wednesday to their firing earlier this year for criticizing the Trump administration's environmental policies.
The employees were among 160 who were fired shortly after signing a "declaration of dissent" in June against EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, whom they said was “recklessly undermining” the agency’s mission and “ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters.”
In their claim before the US Merit Systems Protection Board, which adjudicates appeals from fired federal workers, the six employees argued that they were illegally fired for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and that those firings were carried out in retaliation for their political affiliation.
The fired workers also argued that they arbitrarily received harsher treatment than many other employees who signed the letter, who were suspended without pay for two weeks.
According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), one of the groups defending the employees, many of them had lengthy, distinguished careers of federal service.
One of them, John Darling, was a senior research biologist who spent over two decades helping the EPA curb the damage to endangered aquatic species.
Another, Tom Luben, is an expert in environmental epidemiology who worked at the EPA for over 18 years investigating how air pollution can cause pregnancy complications, and had received 14 National Honor Awards for his contributions over the years.
A third, Missy Haniewicz, served for a decade and was working on hazardous waste cleanup projects at more than 20 sites across Utah at the time she was fired.
PEER provided an example of one of the termination notices the fired employees received. Both the names of the employee and the official who sent the notice were redacted, along with other identifying information.
The termination notice states that the individual was fired for "conduct unbecoming of a federal employee." Although the document notes the employee's "[years] of federal service, most recent distinguished performance rating, awards, and... lack of disciplinary history," it says all of that was outweighed by the “serious nature of your misconduct.”
"The agency is not required to tolerate actions from its employees that undermine the agency’s decisions, interfere with the agency’s operations and mission, and the efficient fulfillment of the agency’s responsibilities to the public," the notice adds. "As an EPA employee, you are required to maintain proper discipline and refrain from conduct that can adversely affect morale in the workplace, foster disharmony, and ultimately impede the efficiency of the agency."
The legal team defending the employee and their colleagues argues that this is untrue. They argue that these employees' terminations violate the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which says employees are "protected against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes." It also protects whistleblowers who publicize information they reasonably believe to be a violation of law, abuse of authority, or danger to public health and safety.
“Federal employees have the right to speak out on matters of public concern in their personal capacities, even when they do so in dissent,” says Joanna Citron Day, general counsel for PEER. “EPA is not only undermining the First Amendment’s free speech protections by trying to silence its own workforce, it is also placing US citizens in peril by removing experienced employees who are tasked with carrying out EPA’s critical mission.”
The second Trump administration has laid off approximately 300,000 federal civil servants over the past year, with some of them being carried out in apparent retaliation for dissent.
On Tuesday—after being briefly reinstated—14 employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were placed back on administrative leave for signing an open letter of dissent in August, warning that cuts to the agency were putting it at risk of similar failures to those after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
And weeks after over a thousand anonymous Department of Health and Human Services employees called for the resignation of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in September, accusing him of "placing the health of all Americans at risk," more than a thousand employees across the department were culled in what was dubbed a "Friday Night Massacre."
Eden Brown Gaines, whose law firm is also defending the employees, said, “If America is to remain on the course of democracy and honor the principles of its Constitution, we must allow its judicial system to restore employment for those unjustly fired and our collective faith in our country."
"Truth is not a fireable offense," PEER said in a statement.
Keep ReadingShow Less
EPA Lacks a PFAS Containment Strategy
The environmental and public health challenges posed by PFAS are immense. EPA needs to do much more than it is doing.
Jul 15, 2024
Every day there is a new headline about discoveries of dangerous amounts of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS in groundwater, municipal wastewater systems, in soil outside military bases and on farms, in freshwater fish, in human blood, and even in mothers’ milk. It seems like the PFAS pollution crisis is out of control.
This April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally set a maximum drinking water contamination limit for two of the oldest and most widespread PFAS. That limit was set at 4 parts per trillion, but EPA also acknowledged that there is no safe amount of PFAS for human consumption.
While this was an important regulatory step, EPA does not appear to have grasped the implications of its own action. Removing PFAS from our water will be very, very expensive, and it will not stop the endless cycle of contamination. To stop this crisis, EPA must interrupt the flow of PFAS reaching our water, soil, and food chain every day.
Although it is far less expensive and far more feasible to prevent PFAS from reaching the environment in the first place than removing these aptly named “forever chemicals,” EPA does not yet have a PFAS containment strategy.
In fact, it seems that EPA is spending more time impeding PFAS containment than implementing it. Consider these examples:
Plastic Containers. Inhance Technologies fluorinates an estimated 200 million containers a year for a wide array of products, such as chemicals, pesticides, personal care products, and fuels, as well as edible oils and flavorings. The fluorinated linings create PFAS which leach into the containers’ contents. This means PFAS contaminates a huge portion of all U.S. commerce.
Yet, EPA moved to block a citizen suit against Inhance on the grounds that EPA was handling the issue. After EPA’s enforcement effort was invalidated by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, EPA declined to appeal or take any other action. As a result, the citizen groups are gearing up again to seek a ban on these PFAS-laden containers in favor of available alternative barrier technologies that do not create PFAS.
Biosolid Fertilizers. Biosolid fertilizers are made from sewage sludge. PFAS are not removed at wastewater treatment plants, and EPA does not limit the amount of PFAS they can contain. Yet under the Clean Water Act, EPA has long been required to identify toxic pollutants in biosolids and adopt regulations to prevent harm to human health or the environment. Unfortunately, it is a responsibility the agency has neglected for decades.
Meanwhile, farms, ranches, and dairies ranging from New Mexico to Maine have been devastated by PFAS contamination from biosolids. Unfortunately, EPA has ignored their pleas for assistance. Now some of these victimized farmers are suing EPA for its failure to prevent set standards for PFAS in biosolids.
Pesticides. PFAS have been found in many insecticides at incredibly high levels. These PFAS are being taken up into the roots and shoots of plants, which means that they are entering our food supply through contaminated soils, water, and the pesticides themselves. Since these are “forever chemicals,” this contamination will last long after the pesticide application.
Ignoring a growing trove of evidence, EPA contends there are no PFAS in pesticides and is discouraging states from testing. The agency has even gone so far as to publish faulty test results in attempt to conceal that scientists had confirmed widespread presence of PFAS in pesticides.
Landfills. Disposal, transportation, and importation of PFAS remains largely unregulated. For example, huge amounts of PFAS are leaching out of U.S. landfills, burned in incinerators, and injected underground with no regulations. Meanwhile, the agency has resisted efforts to designate hundreds of dangerous PFAS chemicals as “hazardous waste,” and regulate them stringently from cradle to grave.
Artificial Turf. Currently, there are an estimated 18,000 synthetic turf sports fields in the U.S., with more than a thousand new installations each year. All brands of artificial turf tested contain PFAS in carpet grass fibers. Besides the direct human exposure, PFAS is leaching off these fields into nearby surface and groundwater, some of which are sources of drinking water,
In addition, there is growing evidence that the PFAS on these surfaces is rubbing off on players’ skin with worrisome consequences. Yet, EPA has yet to even look at this exposure vector.
The environmental and public health challenges posed by PFAS are immense. EPA needs to do much more than it is doing. If the agency will not help abate exposures, it should at least get out of the way and allow states and NGOs to stop this contamination crisis.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Lawsuit Accuses EPA of Hiding Critical Data About Harms of 'Forever Chemicals'
"By sitting on this critical information, EPA is advancing the private interests of a corporate violator and shirking its public health responsibilities," said one plaintiff's attorney.
Feb 15, 2024
A federal lawsuit filed Thursday by a pair of environmental advocacy groups accuses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of "wrongfully withholding test data and other vital information" regarding the presence of so-called "forever chemicals" in millions of fluorinated plastic containers.
The lawsuit—filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Environmental Health (CEH)—argues that the EPA is violating Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) disclosure requirements by improperly classifying health and safety data as trade secrets.
Referring to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly known as forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the suit also accuses the EPA of "denying the public access to the results of testing showing the levels of PFAS in fluorinated plastic containers and their contents along with the identities of the products in which these toxic materials are present."
PEER and CEH said that after they filed a Freedom of Information Act request "for documents shedding light on the health risks associated with PFAS in fluorinated containers," the EPA granted trade secret protection sought by Inhance Technologies, LLC.
Fluorination involves the high-temperature application of fluorine gas to plastic containers to make them more resistant to discoloration and permeation by solvents.
As PEER explained:
PFAS chemicals are formed during the fluorination of high-density polyethylene plastic containers by Inhance Technologies, LLC of Houston, Texas. Inhance is the sole U.S. company conducting this type of fluorination. Studies by EPA, independent researchers, and Inhance itself show that PFAS leaches from the walls of containers into their contents, thus exposing millions of people to PFAS without their knowledge...
Inhance fluorinates 200 million containers a year which are used to package diverse products ranging from fuels to foodstuffs, cosmetics, and cleaning products which consumers and workers use on a daily basis.
"EPA has found that these containers constitute a public health threat, a long-awaited determination that also should encompass the public's right to know," CEH counsel Bob Sussman, who is also a former senior EPA official, said in a statement announcing the new lawsuit.
Used in a broad range of products from clothing to nonstick cookware to firefighting foam, PFAS is linked to cancers of the kidneys and testicles, low infant weight, suppressed immune function, and other adverse health effects. It is found in the blood of 99% of Americans and a similar percentage of people around the world.
"Given the unquestionably major public health stakes, EPA should be stepping up and maximizing access to health and safety data, but the agency is disclosing vital information only grudgingly and with lingering secrecy even though disclosure is mandated by TSCA," Sussman lamented.
Colleen Teubner, PEER's litigation and policy attorney, asserted that "the cloak of confidential business information cannot be used to hide health and safety studies as EPA is currently doing."
"By sitting on this critical information, EPA is advancing the private interests of a corporate violator and shirking its public health responsibilities," she added.
The new lawsuit follows a December 2022 court filing by PEER and CEH seeking to stop Inhance from generating forever chemicals during the manufacture of plastic containers.
Thousands of PFAS-related lawsuits have been launched in U.S. courts over recent decades.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular