Two former biologists at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division in Duluth, Minnesota, Alexander Cole and Stephanie Eytcheson, are among seven former EPA employees suing the agency and Administrator Lee Zeldin after they were fired in 2025 for signing a public “Declaration of Dissent.”
The cases were filed June 30, 2026, in two federal courts, one in the Northern District of Illinois and one in the District of Columbia.
The lawsuits ask whether a federal agency can fire probationary employees for criticizing those policies on their own time, using personal devices, and in what the plaintiffs say was a personal capacity.
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Cole and Eytcheson worked at the Duluth lab, a federal research site tied to toxicology and ecology work in the Great Lakes region. The complaint says Cole was hired on June 30, 2024, as a biologist in EPA’s Office of Research and Development, where he worked on expanding the agency’s ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase and chemical risk-assessment tools. Eytcheson, hired on December 1, 2024, worked in environmental toxicology and later transferred to EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention while on administrative leave.
Because both were recent hires, they were classified as probationary employees. The lawsuits claim they lacked the same appeal path to the Merit Systems Protection Board available to more senior federal workers. Similarly, Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs with James & Hoffman, said all seven fired workers were probationary.
“Declaration of Dissent”
The June 2025 “Declaration of Dissent,” hosted by Stand Up for Science and addressed to Zeldin, framed the dispute as a warning from career staff that the agency was departing from its core mission to protect human health and the environment. The letter said EPA employees were opposing what they described as harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of past EPA work, and disregard for scientific expertise under the Trump administration.
It organized the criticism around five stated concerns: erosion of public trust, rejection of scientific consensus, rollback of environmental justice work in vulnerable communities, dismantling of the Office of Research and Development, and a workplace culture that employees said left staff fearful of retaliation.
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The letter accused EPA leadership of using official agency communications to promote partisan messaging, citing agency references to “green slush funds,” “clean coal,” Trump’s tariffs, and the “Big Beautiful Bill.” It also alleged that EPA decisions on asbestos, mercury, greenhouse gases, PFAS drinking-water limits, fossil-fuel vehicles, electric vehicles, and artificial intelligence were moving against the agency’s own scientific assessments and expert recommendations.
On environmental justice, the letter said the administration had placed staff on leave, canceled grant funding, and removed mapping tools used to identify overburdened communities. It further warned that a proposed reorganization of EPA’s Office of Research and Development could make agency science more vulnerable to political influence.
The declaration also tied the policy complaints to workforce conditions. It accused the administration of promoting a “culture of fear” through layoffs, administrative leave, retirement pressure, and actions targeting environmental justice staff, DEIA-related employees, probationary workers, students, and recent graduates.
“Administrator Zeldin, we urge you to honor your oath and serve the American people. Going forward, you have the opportunity to correct course. Should you choose to do so, we stand ready to support your efforts to fulfill EPA’s mission,” the letter said.
The letter said it was written and signed by EPA employees across offices, regions, and labs “in our personal capacity, on our own time, and without Agency resources,” a point that is central to the fired workers’ First Amendment claim. The complaint says Cole and Eytcheson signed the declaration on June 29, 2025, from home, outside work hours, using personal phones.
The complaint says the public version of the letter listed hundreds of signatories, including Cole and Eytcheson, and stated that it was signed in the workers’ personal capacity, on their own time, and without agency resources.
EPA moved quickly. According to the complaint, the agency placed 144 employees on administrative leave on July 3, 2025, and opened an investigation into their decision to sign the dissent letter.
An EPA spokesperson said at the time that the agency had “zero tolerance” for career staff “unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting” the administration’s agenda, according to E&E News.
“No ethics concern”
The plaintiffs’ strongest claim may be the paper trail inside EPA itself. The complaint cites documents released under the Freedom of Information Act showing that EPA ethics officials concluded there was “no ethics concern” with employees signing the letter and that the workers were exercising First Amendment rights rather than misusing their federal positions. It also says an assistant general counsel wrote on July 2, 2025, that the letter was “likely protected speech under the First Amendment” and advised that EPA should not take personnel actions against employees who signed it.
The same lawyer later warned that courts could find the terminations to be illegal retaliation for protected speech, according to the complaint. EPA leadership ignored those assessments, the plaintiffs allege.
The agency’s investigation also cuts both ways for EPA. The complaint says EPA reviewed whether the plaintiffs used work laptops and whether their signatures interfered with their jobs. According to the plaintiffs, EPA’s own spreadsheet concluded that no plaintiff in the Illinois case signed the letter on a work laptop and that their signatures did not interfere with their job duties.
Cole and Eytcheson were fired on August 29, 2025. Their termination notices said their continued employment was “not in the public interest,” but the complaint alleges the notices did not explain why. The plaintiffs argue there was no performance-based reason for the firings and that the timing shows the signatures were the cause.
MPR News reported that Cole said he does not regret signing the letter and wants to return to public service at EPA. The outlet also reported that EPA declined to comment on pending litigation.
The seven plaintiffs are Claire Balani, Lane To, Alexis Wright, Andreas Harris, Alexander Cole, Stephanie Eytcheson, and Anna Laird. Balani, To, and Wright filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, while Harris, Cole, Eytcheson, and Laird filed in the Northern District of Illinois.
The lawsuits seek reinstatement and back pay, according to Federal News Network. The outlet also reported that the cases follow other challenges from EPA employees who were suspended or fired after the dissent letter, including proceedings involving the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board.
The broader fight is not about one lab in Duluth. It is about whether probationary status gives an administration a lower-friction route to remove dissenting employees before they gain fuller civil-service protections. If courts accept the plaintiffs’ theory, probationary workers may still have a constitutional shield when they speak as private citizens on matters of public concern.
If EPA prevails, the case could reinforce agency discretion over newer employees even in politically charged disputes. That is why the Duluth firings now matter beyond Duluth. The case could define how much dissent a federal workforce can publicly express before political leadership can call it sabotage.
