The letter had accused the Trump administration of politicizing, dismantling and sidelining the agency.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday placed 144 employees on administrative leave and opened an investigation into their decision to sign a letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the agency.
Current and former E.P.A. employees, lawyers and advocates expressed alarm at the development, saying the agency appeared to be ignoring the employees’ First Amendment rights.
The agency said its actions were warranted because the employees had signed the letter using their official titles and because the letter had denigrated the agency’s leadership. “The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” the E.P.A. press secretary, Brigit Hirsch, wrote in an email.
The 144 employees received emails on Thursday saying they had been placed on leave for the next two weeks “pending an administrative investigation,” according to a copy of the email reviewed by The New York Times. “You are required to provide a current email address and phone number so that we can contact you as part of our investigation,” the email said, adding that the staff members would continue to collect paychecks while on leave.
Justin Chen, second vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents more than 8,000 E.P.A. workers, said the agency’s moves were “clearly an act of retaliation.” He said the union would “protect our members to the full extent of the law.”
In the letter that prompted today’s action, which was sent on Monday to Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, the employees voiced concern that the agency had made decisions based on a political agenda, not on science and the law.
Recent E.P.A. news releases and newsletters have echoed some of President Trump’s comments on the environment, the letter said, citing agency statements describing coal as “beautiful” and “clean.” Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels and is a significant source of greenhouse gases.
The letter was organized by Stand Up for Science, a group that planned a March rally in Washington to protest the Trump administration’s steep cuts to federally funded scientific research. Of the 278 E.P.A. employees who signed the letter, 173 signed their names, while 105 signed anonymously for fear of retaliation.
Colette Delawalla, the founder and executive director of Stand Up for Science and a graduate student in psychology at Emory University, said in a brief statement on Thursday that her group was “still gathering information on this situation.”
Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit group that defends the rights of civil servants, said the Constitution generally protects the speech of federal workers. “We believe strongly that these federal employees have First Amendment rights,” he said.
