Two biologists who were fired from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lab in Duluth last year after signing a public letter criticizing the Trump administration are suing to get their jobs back.
Alex Cole and Stephanie Eytcheson are among seven fired EPA employees nationwide who have filed two lawsuits alleging the terminations were retaliatory and violated their First Amendment rights.
More than 100 EPA employees around the country signed their names to a public “declaration of dissent” in June 2025 that criticized the direction and policies of the agency under President Donald Trump.
The letter accused EPA administrator Lee Zeldin of “undermining public trust,” “ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters” and “reversing EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities,” among other charges.
The EPA then put nearly 150 employees on administrative leave, including up to six workers at the Duluth lab. “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,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement at the time.
Cole and Eytcheson were among the employees eventually fired. “The EPA decided that respecting the First Amendment was less important than protecting its thin-skinned leaders from criticism, said Danny Rosenthal, partner at James & Hoffman, which is representing the employees along with the group Democracy Forward. “The agency never should have fired our clients, and we will ask the courts to reverse this unconstitutional and un-American action.”
An EPA spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
In an interview with MPR News, Cole said he loved his work at the Duluth lab, which was founded more than 50 years ago and is recognized as a national leader in researching environmental toxicology.
“I just really think that the First Amendment is foundational for maintaining democracy,” Cole said. “Our democracy is turning 250 years old this year, and it really needs to continue to be recognized and exercised freely.”
Cole said he doesn’t regret signing the letter last year, which was organized by a group called Stand up for Science. According to the lawsuit, he signed the letter outside of work hours at his home from his personal cell phone.
“I just really believed… and still do believe in everything that was written in that letter,” Cole said. “I was just really trying to bring that to attention.”
Cole was hired in the summer of 2024. Like the other plaintiffs in the lawsuits, he was still considered “probationary,” which meant that he didn’t have the same worker protections as more senior staffers.
The lawsuit quotes an internal email from the EPA’s Office of General Counsel that appears to show the agency acted against its own internal legal advice.
An email from an Assistant General Counsel in the office, written on July 2, 2025, the day before the EPA staffers were put on leave, concludes that “there are no ethics concerns with employees signing the ‘stand up for science’ letter” and that “the letter is likely protected speech under the First Amendment.”
That same attorney recommended against the agency taking disciplinary actions against the employees, including firing them, and in a subsequent email in August suggested that courts could find “that their termination constituted illegal retaliation for their first amendment protected speech.”
For Cole’s part, he just hopes to get his job back, to rejoin the federal workforce as a public servant, “to continue to do what I was doing before, which was upholding the EPA mission statement of protecting human health and the environment,” he said.
