Mahri Stainnak had just started a job at the Office of Personnel Management focused on bringing more engineers, technologists and scientists into the government.
Sherrell Pyatt helped to resolve personnel disputes, including through mediation, at the Department of Homeland Security.
Jessica Swan's position at the Department of Education was overseeing grants to help some 5 million children in the U.S. learn English.
Each brought years of experience to their roles. Each was removed from their position soon after President Trump signed two executive orders ending diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) efforts in the federal government.
That's despite the fact that they were not working in DEIA offices at the time of their dismissals. They contend their jobs don't conflict with those executive orders.
Instead, they believe they are among hundreds and possibly thousands of federal employees targeted because of their past involvement with government DEIA programs and initiatives — or perhaps because the Trump administration merely associated them with the concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Many of these workers say they've never received an explanation for why they're being fired.
Now, Stainnak, who uses they/them pronouns, is asking for their job back. They are the named appellant in a complaint filed with the independent agency tasked with hearing personnel disputes within the federal government. The complaint alleges that Stainnak was among a pool of federal employees unlawfully fired by the Trump administration as a punishment for "their perceived political affiliations."
"It's not right that myself and others have been targeted and illegally fired based on who the Trump administration thinks we are or the assumptions they make about our values," says Stainnak.
Swan and Pyatt have both been told they will be terminated in the coming months. They plan to join the complaint once they are separated from the government.
Summary firings lead to legal challenges
As Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk have swiftly made good on their promises to dramatically slash the federal government, legal challenges have piled up. So have warnings that the government is losing talented, experienced civil servants who have faithfully served the American public through multiple administrations.
"It's the opposite of trying to develop the meritocracy economy that we want to have," says Kelly Dermody, a managing partner with Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, one of the law firms that together with the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia brought the complaint on behalf of federal workers. "It's a huge loss."
Under federal law, government employees generally cannot take their personnel disputes directly to court. Instead, they must work through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an agency set up by Congress to hear such complaints.
But now, that board itself faces uncertainty. In February, Trump fired one of its members, Democrat Cathy Harris. Harris has sued to get her seat back, citing federal law that protects board members from removal for reasons other than cause. On Monday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated her, though the Trump administration is expected to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in.
In response to NPR's questions about the class complaint and the legal fight at the merit board, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote: "President Trump has the authority to manage personnel within his Executive Branch, end unlawful DEI practices in government offices, and ensure hiring and firing decisions are based only on merit."
In one of his executive orders, Trump says the federal government and many institutions outside government have adopted and are actively using "dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences" masquerading as DEI.
The order says those policies "undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system."
A dinnertime call brings perplexing news
Stainnak first learned something was up on Jan. 21, the day after Trump returned to the White House to start his second term.
"I was having dinner with my family and my personal cell phone rang," they recall. It was someone from human resources at the Office of Personnel Management. Stainnak began shaking.
Hours earlier, the Trump administration had directed agencies to shut down their offices focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, citing Trump's executive orders.
Sure enough, Stainnak was told they were being put on administrative leave immediately. "I was incredibly shocked," they recall. "The first thing I said was 'I'm not in a diversity, equity and inclusion role.'"
At that time, Stainnak was in a brand-new job as the director of OPM's Talent Innovation Group, focused on bringing more people with technical skills into the government. Stainnak had only been in that job for a week.
But the Trump administration had asked agencies to identify all employees who were working in DEIA roles as of Nov. 5, 2024, the day Trump was reelected — two and a half months before he'd signed the new executive orders.
Back in 2024, Stainnak was in a DEIA role. Under the Biden administration, Stainnak had worked at OPM's Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, including on LGBTQ issues and later as deputy director, supporting workers across the government.
"My team put together events that helped veterans and people with disabilities and recent graduates, including from minority serving institutions, be able to learn about federal jobs across agencies that might be of interest to them," says Stainnak. "Having a government that represents all segments of society … absolutely makes us stronger."
Stainnak was officially terminated from their new job on March 26, some 60 days after being given formal notice.
An illegal reduction in force
Stainnak believes their firing had nothing to do with their new position — and everything to do with their work over the previous four years.
Their complaint before the MSPB asserts that the Trump administration is not merely resetting priorities, as new administrations always do, but attempting to punish those it believes supported its political opponents.
"President Trump has explicitly associated DEIA programs with his Democratic predecessor, Joseph R. Biden, without regard to the worker's skills or current job assignment," the complaint alleges. "Most notably, President Trump repeatedly has called DEI work the function of a 'leftist ideology' and a 'woke' political agenda."
The complaint also asks the merit board to examine whether Trump's anti-DEIA executive orders discriminated against — or adversely affected — federal workers who are not white or male, which would be a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
It's not yet clear how many federal employees might join the class complaint. Attorneys involved with the case say they currently represent nearly a dozen employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the departments of Labor, Homeland Security and Labor.
Some, like Stainnak, worked in DEIA offices under Biden. For others, the only DEIA-related activity attorneys say they could find was involvement in a training or employee resource group.
A 4th generation civil servant ousted
Sherrell Pyatt began her federal career a decade ago with a job at the U.S. Postal Service, where four generations of her family have served. Her work there included research into how to stop illegal drugs from entering the country through the mail. It led to other roles in the government.
During the first Trump administration, she worked as a congressional liaison for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, helping members of Congress find legislative fixes to problems. As part of her job, Pyatt brought lawmakers to the border and into detention facilities to get an up-close view of conditions there.
"It was a way not only to support our agents and officers at the border so that they could get what they needed, but also so that the American public could see exactly what was going on and understand why we were saying there was a crisis at the border," she says.
Later, Pyatt was part of a Customs and Border Protection team that examined what went wrong in the in-custody deaths of two people, work that was recognized with a commissioner's award.
After Biden took office during the pandemic, Pyatt was detailed to FEMA, where she helped communities in the Southeast get information about COVID vaccines. As the sole Spanish speaker on her team, she also helped Latino communities understand how to get help after a hurricane.
"It was ensuring that the public could trust information that was coming out of the government and was also able to access the services that we provide," says Pyatt.
In January 2024, she moved to the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and a month before Trump's inauguration, she transitioned into an equal opportunity specialist role in that office.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires that federal agencies establish equal employment opportunity programs to ensure that personnel decisions involving workers and job applicants are free of discrimination.
"It's not something that is 'DEI.' It is mandated by law," Pyatt says.
Still, on Jan. 30, she was put on administrative leave and told it was because of Trump's anti-DEI executive orders. Last month, the entire Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties received a termination notice, citing a different executive order focused on maximizing efficiency through a downsizing of the federal workforce.
"These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining [the department's] mission," DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, referring to Pyatt's office and two others.
Pyatt's official termination date is May 27, after which she says she will join Stainnak's complaint before the merit board.
Most government jobs are nonpartisan
Pyatt points out that all the government jobs she's held are nonpartisan. "We don't pick a side. We don't get to decide who our boss is," she says.
Dermody says this is true for many of her clients — federal employees whose work crosses administrations.
"They don't serve any particular person in the White House or the Congress," she says.
Pyatt worries the loss of so many people who have stepped up to serve the country will cost the American public.
"The community at large suffers when you have these sort of rash actions that are not based in any kind of research or evidence," she says.
The White House press office did not respond to NPR's question about whether these mass layoffs are resulting in a brain drain in the federal workforce.
What now for English language learners
Jessica Swan worries about a particular community being affected by the cuts: the 5 million children in the U.S. who are English language learners.
Swan, who joined the Department of Education in 2020 after decades in the field, including as an educator, had a job administering grants to prepare teachers to meet these children's needs.
"My role is not considered a DEI position," says Swan. "In fact, if I had to sum up the importance of my role, it is in being a guardrail for federal funding … to prevent any fraud, waste or abuse."
Yet she, too, received an email sent on Jan. 31, informing her that she was being put on leave because of Trump's anti-DEIA executive orders.
"I was immediately in tears because I know I have spent the last three decades of my life working to support this particular population of kids — our English learners," says Swan.
She spent the next 10 days calling people at the Education Department, trying to figure out why she and her colleagues in the Office of English Language Acquisition had been swept up in the DEIA purge.
"To date, I've been given no answer," she says.
Swan conferred with others at the Education Department who'd similarly been put on leave.
"The only commonality that we could find was that we all had enrolled at some point in a diversity training that was recommended that we take by former Secretary Betsy DeVos under the first Trump administration," she says.
Asked if this was the reason some Education Department staff were put on leave, Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the department, wrote: "At the Department of Education, we are evaluating staffing in line with the commitment to prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in schools and putting student outcomes above special interests."
Two months into her leave, Swan still hasn't received her official termination notice but expects it is coming soon, as the Trump administration takes steps to dismantle the entire Education Department.
Closing down her office makes no sense, Swan says, especially in light of Trump's executive order making English the official language of the U.S.
"We've got over 5 million kids who will need access to English, who will need the ability to learn and to grow in the language," she says. "These are our kids. This is the present and the future of our country, of our democracy."
Have information you want to share about ongoing changes across the federal government? NPR's Andrea Hsu can be contacted through encrypted communications on Signal at andreahsu.08.
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