Justice Department defends Pentagon’s proposed firings of Stars and Stripes staffers

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is defending the Pentagon’s plan to dismiss three Stars and Stripes staffers for alleged insubordination, pushing back against claims that the decisions were made partially in retaliation for the military outlet’s coverage of conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte sued the Department of Defense (DOD) last Thursday, seeking a court order that would block the department from terminating them.

The staffers have alleged that the Pentagon is attempting to fire them “for speaking up as private citizens in support of the press’s freedom to cover military operations,” in addition to other First Amendment violations.

The dispute involves comments made by Korte and Slavin during a July interview on “CBS Sunday Morning” regarding the military newspaper’s editorial independence.

Justice Department attorneys argued in a late Tuesday filing that those remarks were not constitutionally protected because they were made within the scope of the staffers’ “official duties as Stripes personnel.”

“Because Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte spoke pursuant to their official duties, their proposed separations do not implicate the First Amendment, whatever the wisdom of the Department’s personnel judgment,” the filing, signed by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, stated.

The three staffers were issued separation notices on Aug. 21, with officials citing “insubordination and violations of regulations based on their CBS statements” as the grounds for Slavin and Korte’s dismissal, according to court documents.

Lederer’s notice cited his refusal to deliver separation notices to the two other employees, among other reasons, as justification for his termination. The publisher announced his retirement on Aug. 19 amid concerns about the editorial direction of the outlet under the Trump administration.

“Delivering or declining to deliver those notices is the performance or non-performance of a supervisory task, not the speech of a citizen,” DOJ attorneys wrote. “Plaintiffs’ theory that the refusal was protected because Mr. Slavin’s and Ms. Korte’s speech was protected, fails with its premise: to deliver a notice of separation is not speech, regardless of whether the separation is justified.”

The government also objected to arguments that the firings were an attempt to punish the staffers for unfavorable coverage on the Lincoln’s extended deployment, claiming the decision was made weeks before the article was published.

All three were placed on administrative leave, and the Pentagon has agreed to pause their terminations until at least Sept. 4 while legal proceedings continue. A hearing has been scheduled for Friday.

Stars and Stripes has operated independently from the Defense Department since 1993, with internal policies stating it should be free from “news management or censorship,” even though it is partially funded by the Pentagon.

But the Trump administration has sought to reshape the newspaper’s editorial output in recent months, with Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell saying in January that it would “ modernize its operations ” and “refocus its content away from woke distractions.”

The Pentagon is facing additional lawsuits from the paper’s ombudsman and two advisory board members over accusations that the administration is trying to undermine its independence and censor its content.