News Release

Racism at Browner’s EPA?

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AP reports “Carol Browner … will lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner, the longest-serving EPA administrator in history, headed the agency during the Clinton administration’s two terms.”

Time magazine, in its section of “Quotes About Browner,” features this:
“She wasn’t at all sympathetic to complaints about civil rights abuses. We were treated like Negroes, to use a polite term. We were put in our place.”
— Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a former EPA employee whose complaints of a “racially toxic” environment there led to the signing of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-Discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2001. (Time, Feb. 23, 2001)

MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO
Coleman-Adebayo said today: “It is very disturbing to me on the heels of my being illegally fired, not fired for cause, not fired for performance issues, but because of health concerns — that the very woman I prevailed against in court is being elevated to a White House decision-level position — what message does this send to others in the federal government who are considering exposing corruption or discrimination? Should government managers take comfort in the fact that employees can prevail against them in federal court, Congress can unanimously condemn their leadership and pass a law to stop them, and they still may be tapped for a high-level position? How tragic.”

For further background, see:

News coverage:
Time magazine, “How the EPA Was Made to Clean Up Its Own Stain — Racism

News release:
EPA Whistleblower Illegally Fired While Carol Browner Energy Czar Soars Through Transition

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167