The lawsuit alleges that HHS leadership knew the records they used to guide their layoff decisions were inaccurate and contained errors.
Seven former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this week sued Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., alleging that the decision to fire them was based on staff records that were “hopelessly error-ridden.”
The class action complaint, filed on Tuesday, claimed that HHS shared their personnel data with other federal bodies, including the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget—even as these records contained inaccuracies, and that leaders knew that those records contained inaccuracies.
Those agencies and officials from them, including FDA commissioner Marty Makary as well as Elon Musk, in his capacity as “de facto leader of DOGE” are also named as defendants.
“Instead of taking steps to verify the contents of the records and correct the systemic inaccuracies, the agencies promptly used them to fire 10,000 employees,” according to the suit. “That was unlawful and actionable under the Privacy Act.”
In particular, the suit claimed that some reduction-in-force notices referenced performance ratings that were “flatly incorrect,” containing scores that were lower than what the affected employees had received. In one case, not only did the termination notice contain incorrect performance ratings, but “Defendants did not seem to know where [the fired employee] worked,” the lawsuit alleged.
HHS leaders, the complaint continued, “knew that the records and data being used to make employment decisions were inaccurate and incomplete.” The Plaintiffs pointed to a statement that an agency spokesperson made “almost immediately” after the layoffs, telling various media outlets that errors in terminations are “because the data collected by HHS’s multiple, siloed HR divisions is inaccurate.”
These mistakes, according to the complaint, are in violation of the Privacy Act, which states that employees “have recourse when an agency takes adverse action against them based on an inaccurate, irrelevant, untimely, or incomplete record.”
Chaos and inconsistencies have plagued the massive layoffs undertaken by the Trump administration. Some staff at the FDA, for instance, continue to get paid and enjoy government benefits—even as they languish on administrative leave as the official verdict on their terminations awaits a final legal verdict, according to a Monday report from Endpoints News.
Meanwhile, nonprofit news outlet NOTUS last week revealed that the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again Report cited sources that were non-existent. Other publications, including The Washington Post, have since pointed out that the report could have been written with assistance from artificial intelligence.
Tuesday’s lawsuit is the second such complaint seeking to stop Kennedy’s sweeping reorganization of the HHS—a move that would see some 10,000 roles at the agency eliminated. Last month, a California court issued a preliminary injunction against the reorganization, effectively pausing the layoffs.
