Lawsuit Accuses Trump Administration of Legal Violations Over USAID Firings Using His Own Words

Several former USAID employees have filed a lawsuit in federal court, accusing the Trump administration of engaging in unlawful age discrimination by systematically replacing long-standing foreign aid staff with younger individuals endorsed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The lawsuit, spanning 124 pages and filed in Washington, D.C., dedicates nearly 80 pages to listing the names of the displaced foreign service workers, who range in age from their 40s to 60s.

The suit was brought against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the State Department, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was the acting administrator of USAID from February to August 2025, when Elon Musk took his chainsaw to an agency he called “criminal,” declaring it was time “for it to die.” Amy Gleason, the acting DOGE administrator now, was also sued.

The complaint claims that the Trump administration’s overhaul of USAID resulted in the loss of vast institutional knowledge and expertise that the plaintiffs had accumulated over decades. The changes were reportedly justified by the administration’s desire to eliminate what they termed “dinosaurs” and to recruit “younger, more energetic, more tech-savvy” employees.

According to the lawsuit, a 19-year-old employee known by the nickname “Big Balls” was tasked with overseeing the departures of these experienced workers, a move that the plaintiffs argue exemplifies the administration’s discriminatory practices.

The complaint further notes that officials frequently referred to older federal employees as “dinosaurs,” implying they were outdated and no longer needed in a changing environment. It contends that the administration’s actions were driven by a clear bias against older workers, who were forced to witness their dismissals being orchestrated by a young, Musk DOGE-backed employee celebrated for his role in the process.

The lawsuit also alleges that the discriminatory tone was set by former President Donald Trump himself, who expressed admiration for DOGE and Elon Musk, noting their ability to attract youthful and highly intelligent individuals.

“As the Defendants’ derogatory language towards older workers reverberated, other high-ranking officials adopted and endorsed the same age-based messaging to justify the terminations at USAID,” the filing said. “Sources close to the administration boldly stated that: ‘[t]his is a Gen Z, millennial takeover of the federal government,’ adding that DOGE, by conducting mass firings, was addressing ‘the geriatric, the kind of nursing home regime that has been pushing the country into oblivion. Now the young guns are taking over the country for the better.’”

The problem with the administration’s “messaging campaign to convince the public to put [a] premium on the youth and vigor of the officials behind the terminations, as juxtaposed to the claimed age-related lethargy of the employees they were terminating” is that it revealed the “unlawful attack” for what it was, “evidence of direct and intentional age discrimination” under the guise of reducing the deficit, the plaintiffs claimed.

“As part of this age-related truncation of workers, the persons responsible routinely peddled in code words indicative of age discrimination, including transition towards a more tech-savvy federal workforce, closely associated with youth. In fact, some of the decision making in terminating these employees appear to have been carried out by neophytes to federal service in their twenties,” the lawsuit continued. “The messaging and conduct employed was intended to, and did, create intolerable working conditions for older workers, replete with specific efforts to force them into resignation or early retirement.”

Worse yet, the plaintiffs alleged, they were lied to when they were told their “positions were not being retained.” Rather, they were or are being replaced by “younger cheaper counterparts.”

“[T]he Defendants have sought, and continue to seek, new, younger employees to conduct the same or similar functions as Plaintiffs,” the complaint stated. “This has been done at the Department of State through a discriminatory job screening pattern and practice, that disproportionately disqualifies older employees and is intended to exclude Plaintiffs from returning to work for the federal government. The Department of State’s ongoing recruitment for the same and similar positions from which Plaintiffs were terminated solidifies the pretextual nature of the [reductions in force, or RIF] that upended Plaintiffs’ lives and unlawfully destroyed their retirement plans and benefits. It is a ruse to replace older established workers with greater salary and benefits with younger cheaper counterparts.”

As a result, the civil lawsuit brought seven counts against the administration, several of them alleging violations of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The last count claimed the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it knew most of the workers it fired were 40 or older and yet “failed to assess the adverse impact of an abrupt, arbitrary, and pretextual RIF on this older workforce and failed to take any meaningful steps to mitigate the harmful impact of the RIF on older workers.”