http://aaenvironment.blogspot.com/2008/11/dr-marsha-coleman-adebayo-carol-browner.html

Time magazine reported that Carol M. Browner’s nomination Monday for the newly-created Energy Czar position, raises embarrassing questions in the Environmental Protection Agency’s employee relations history due to Ms. Browner’s loss in Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner on charges of discriminating against employees based on sex and race, as well as retaliating against whistleblowers and denying them their civil rights. The announcement was 2 weeks ago just as the successful plaintiff in the case, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, was illegally fired by the present EPA Administrator, one of Ms. Browner’s former assistant administrators.

Time quotes Coleman-Adebayo as saying Administrator Browner “…wasn’t at all sympathetic to complaints about civil rights abuses. We were treated like Negroes, to use a polite term. We were put in our place.” — Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a former EPA employee whose complaints of a “racially toxic” environment there led to the signing of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-Discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2001. (TIME, February 23, 2001)

“It is very disturbing to me on the heels of my being illegally fired,” said Dr. Coleman-Adebayo, “not fired for cause, not fired for performance issues, but because of health concerns —that the very woman I prevailed against in court is being elevated to a White House decision-level position—what message does this send to others in the Federal government who are considering exposing corruption or discrimination? Should government managers take comfort in the fact that employees can prevail against them in Federal court, Congress can unanimously condemn their leadership and pass a law to stop them, and they still may be tapped for a high level position? How tragic.”

Coleman-Adebayo is referred to in Time’s reporting as the woman with “a streak of Rosa Parks,” for her staunch refusal to look the other way on criminal activities in an international mining operation in South Africa. When she reported retaliation, discrimination and the denial of her civil rights to then-Administrator Browner, Browner refused to intervene. Before Coleman-Adebayo faced a federal jury, she was the target of death threats. A jury verdict found in Coleman-Adebayo’s favor, awarding her the largest-ever cash judgement against the Agency. Ms. Browner never took any action against those the case exposed for wrong doing; even after Congress order her to do so. It wasn’t until Browner’s successor, Christine Todd Whitman—in her first act as EPA Administrator—announced that the verdict in Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner would not be contested, that the agency accepted responsibility in this historic case.

Congress, outraged at the deplorable conditions inside EPA, by unanimous votes in both chambers passed the No FEAR Act, the first civil rights law of the 21st century, with provisions to protect whistleblowers from retaliation and discrimination. The law mandates that the lessons in Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner be required of all Federal employees every 2 years, to help break down the racial barriers exposed in the lawsuit. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo is widely considered to be among but a few standard bearers for the national whistleblower and civil rights movement. Her firing raises troubling questions as to whether this pattern of retaliation will stop under the Obama administration. Whistleblowers around the country are following this case to see if EPA Administrator-designate Lisa Jackson is going to break from the Bush treatment of whistleblowers and reinstate Dr. Coleman-Adebayo.