Johnson Must Testify in an up-coming EEOC Hearing!
Dr. MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO first became a whistleblower at the EPA while representing the Agency to the White House on assignment to South Africa. She discovered that a US multinational corporation was responsible for poisoning a community outside of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. She also faced racial and sexual harassment. She was called racial names, such as uppity N*** and told in senior staff meetings that she fit in because she was considered an “honorary white man.” The retaliation was brutal under the EPA Carol Browner administration, but the retaliation has worsened in recent years, under the Johnson administration. Coleman-Adebayo has successfully teleworked since she became seriously ill as a result of working in what a federal jury called a hostile work environment for over a decade. In an act of retaliation, after the Agency decided to end settlement discussions, she was transferred to the Office of the Administrator, to work under Steve Johnson’s staff. The first order of business was to create a position for Dr. Coleman-Adebayo that was outside her area of expertise.
Dr. Coleman-Adebayo was ordered to disregard her physician’s orders and return to the hostile office work environment of the EPA, where she had received death and rape threats. When Congress found out about the escalating level of retaliation, Congressional members Sheila Jackson-Lee, John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Tom Davis, and Chris Van Hollen wrote to Steve Johnson offering Coleman-Adebayo a detail in Congress. Johnson, wrote back through a surrogate denying the congressional requests and demanding, despite warnings from her physicians that she was in imminent danger of a stroke or heart attack, that she return to the hostile work environment.
Since she returned to the EPA she has endured three medical crises. In all three instances her supervisors refused to provide emergency medical assistance or to even call the EPA health clinic. On two of the medical crises she was evacuated to a local hospital. Johnson’s EPA has forced her to choose between her health and her job. She is currently on medical leave without pay.
The retaliation has been so brutal that even when EPA and other federal government employees have stepped forward to provide “donated” paid hours to assist Coleman-Adebayo and her family, the Agency initially denied her application to accept the resources and later forced her to wait for months to receive her colleague’s generosity. All of these hostile acts are intended to send a chilling message to EPA employees about the length the Agency will go to destroy anyone who blows the whistle on corruption, waste or environmental racism.
Johnson Must Testify
In an upcoming hearing before an administrative judge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Coleman-Adebayo has named Steve Johnson as well as other EPA managers in a discrimination and retaliation suit. The Agency has argued that Johnson should not be deposed. Johnson, however, is a civil servant and must be held accountable for his actions as well as his subordinates. In addition, he has critical information and perhaps played a major role in the retaliation of Dr. Coleman-Adebayo. These facts can only be determined if Steve Johnson is deposed. In addition to the role he has played as EPA Administrator in the Coleman-Adebayo case, he was head of the office where Dr. Coleman-Adebayo worked years before he was appointed by President Bush as EPA administrator.
A Johnson deposition would provide a keen insight into the internal workings of his administration and their tactics to destroy whistleblowers and other employees who depend of the protections under the Civil Rights Act. The public must insist that Johnson be held accountable for acts of retaliation against whistleblowers.
The agency has used every tactic, including repeated administrative maneuverings to slow down the EEOC process and to have Coleman-Adebayo’s case dismissed. However, Steve Johnson is not above the law and the public must demand that Steve Johnson be held accountable for acts of discrimination and retaliation, Johnson must testify!
