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US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk are facing a lawsuit alleging they relied on faulty data in firing 10,000 federal employees.
Former US Department of Health and Human Services employees say the HHS relied on “hopelessly error-ridden” personnel records in making sweeping employment decisions that stripped thousands of federal workers of their jobs.
The allegations come in a US District Court for the District of Columbia class action complaint set to be filed Tuesday, in which the former employees accuse the HHS, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and others of violating a 1974 law known as the Privacy Act that requires the government rely on accurate records in taking adverse actions against people.
“Because the decisionmakers at these agencies were working with such flawed data, they barely knew who they were cutting,” Clayton Bailey, an attorney with Civil Service Law Center LLP, a firm launched to back federal workers, said in a statement.
Among the plaintiffs is Catherine Jackson, a former HHS Administration for Children and Families employee who was based in Seattle, Wash. According to the complaint, Jackson received her reduction-in-force notice and saw “flatly incorrect” performance ratings.
In the case of another ACF employee in the class action, Melissa Adams, the complaint said the HHS “did not seem to know where she worked” when cutting off her employment.
In addition to incorrect performance ratings, the lawsuit also accuses the HHS and others of relying on wrong position descriptions and office assignments in making employment decisions in a rushed fashion.
The plaintiffs are seeking financial damages no less than $1,000 a person. They also want the court to declare that the HHS use of the data in its firings was unlawful.
The cuts were “motivated by a deep-seated animus toward federal workers,” the former employees argue, pointing to an incident in which a man pulled up near a Food and Drug Administration employee heading to her car and shouted “This is DOGE and this is your Last Supper!”
“The employee was shaken, but didn’t understand the incident at the time. She received her RIF notice the next morning,” the complaint said.
The layoffs initiated on April 1 jolted a slew of HHS agencies, including the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health.
Prior to that, Kennedy had said that the Trump administration was “realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”
The case is Jackson v. Kennedy, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01750, complaint filed 6/3/25
