Tania Nemer, one of dozens of immigration judges dismissed by the Trump administration this year, has filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., saying her firing could have sweeping consequences for the federal workforce and civil rights law.
Nemer alleges that, despite receiving top performance reviews, she was terminated because she is female, because she holds dual citizenship with Lebanon, and because she once ran for municipal office in Ohio as a Democrat. She contends those reasons violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the First Amendment.
According to Nemer’s attorney, the government has defended the dismissals by arguing that the president’s Article II authority to oversee the executive branch supersedes that civil rights statute. “This is a case in which the President of the United States has asserted a constitutional right to discriminate against federal employees,” wrote Nathaniel Zelinsky of the Washington Litigation Group. “If the government prevails in transforming the law, it will eviscerate the professional, non‑partisan civil service as we know it.”
The lawsuit describes an abrupt removal in early February: Nemer says she was summoned from the bench and escorted out of a federal building in Cleveland. Her supervisor and the chief immigration judge there reportedly told her they did not know why she was being dismissed during her probationary period.
Probationary federal employees face fewer procedural protections when contesting firings than tenured civil servants, but they still retain constitutional safeguards against retaliation for political speech and protections under civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex, race and national origin. Nemer filed a formal discrimination complaint with an Equal Employment Opportunity office about a month after her dismissal; that office later dismissed her claims in September, concluding that Title VII conflicts with the president’s asserted removal power.
The lawsuit argues the stakes go beyond Nemer’s case: if the government’s position holds, it would allow a president to lawfully fire female federal workers because of their sex, terminate employees born to immigrant parents or holding dual citizenship because of national origin, or dismiss staff for political activity or affiliation without meaningful judicial recourse.
Nemer asks a court to reinstate her, award back pay and issue an order erasing her termination. She says she never received official notice explaining the dismissal. The administrative record cited past driving offenses from the late 1990s and early 2000s and two local tax matters she disclosed during her background check; the complaint calls those items a pretext for discrimination. The Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.