“She has adopted a practice of sending increasingly proselytizing communications to the entire USDA workforce, promoting her own preferred brand of Christian beliefs and theology to the captive audience of employees that report to her, directly or indirectly,” said the National Federal of Federal Employees, a named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Federal workers have filed a lawsuit against Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who lawyers claim subjected employees to “government-sponsored religious coercion” by sending an Easter email that promoted an overtly Christian message.
According to POLITICO, the email was sent to about 90,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In it, Broke celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Attorneys for the plaintiffs also cited older emails that seemed to contain religious themes.
The lawsuit notes that Brooke “sent no messages even acknowledging—let alone celebrating or sermonizing—other religions’ holidays.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture said that the agency cannot comment on pending litigation.
“While we do not comment on pending litigation, we will keep the plaintiffs in our prayers during this process,” spokesman Michael Abboud said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of seven agency employees and a workers’ union, claims that Rollins’ religious messaging makes non-Christians “feel excluded and unwelcome, and they fear the negative consequences of not sharing the Secretary’s religion or expressing their own different beliefs in the workplace.”
“She has adopted a practice of sending increasingly proselytizing communications to the entire USDA workforce, promoting her own preferred brand of Christian beliefs and theology to the captive audience of employees that report to her, directly or indirectly,” said the National Federal of Federal Employees, a named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit said that Rollins’ religious emails likely violate employees’ First Amendment rights.
“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 lawsuit says. “It is exactly the sort of government-sponsored religious coercion, religious sermonizing, and denominational preference that the Establishment Clause prohibits.”
The lawsuit cites several of Rollins’ prior emails, including a Thanksgiving message in which she shared her “gratitude toward a loving God.” In a later Christmas email, Rollins stated that “God gave us the greatest gift possible.” Finally, on Easter, the secretary described the story of Jesus’s resurrection as the “greatest” ever told.
“Our nation’s Founders—having learned from the harmful effects of past religious conflicts—adopted the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to safeguard against government promoting any favored religion or imposing its preferred religious practice on its citizens to protect religious freedom for all,” the lawsuit says.
Sources
Lawsuit accuses agriculture secretary of ‘religious coercion’ in staff emails
USDA employees allege Easter religious message violated First Amendment
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