Tania Nemer is one of dozens of immigration judges fired by the Trump administration this year. A new lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., says what happened to Nemer — and why — could scramble the federal workforce and unsettle foundational civil rights laws.
Nemer alleges that despite top performance reviews, she was dismissed because of her gender, her status as a dual citizen of Lebanon, and because she once ran for municipal office in Ohio as a Democrat. She says those reasons violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the First Amendment.
The government has argued that the president’s Article II power to oversee the executive branch effectively overrides that civil rights law, Nemer’s attorney said. “This is a case in which the President of the United States has asserted a constitutional right to discriminate against federal employees,” wrote her lawyer, 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 administration abruptly fired Nemer in early February, summoning her from the bench and escorting her out of a federal building in Cleveland. Both her supervisor and the chief immigration judge there told her they did not know why she was being dismissed in the middle of her probationary period, the lawsuit says.
Probationary federal workers have fewer rights to contest firing than other civil servants, but they remain covered by constitutional protections against retaliation for political speech and by civil rights laws that bar discrimination based on race, sex and national origin. Nemer filed a formal discrimination complaint with an Equal Employment Opportunity office a month after her firing. That office dismissed her claims in September, concluding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act conflicts with the president’s power to remove federal workers.
The lawsuit says the implications extend beyond a single immigration judge. It argues the agency’s decision would mean the president could lawfully fire female federal workers because of their sex, workers born to immigrant parents or with dual citizenship because of their national origin, and employees for political activities or affiliations — with no recourse in the courts.
Nemer seeks reinstatement, back pay and an order erasing her termination. She says she never received official notice explaining the dismissal. In the administrative record, a senior Justice Department immigration official mentioned driving offenses from the late 1990s and early 2000s and two local tax cases Nemer disclosed during her background check; her lawsuit calls those issues a pretext. The Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.