Marsha Coleman-Adebayo (born August 18, 1952) is an American former senior policy analyst for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Beginning in 1996, she filed complaints alleging that a company from the United States was mining vanadium in South Africa and harming the environment and human health. The EPA did not respond, and Coleman-Adebayo reported her concerns to other organizations. When the EPA subsequently did not promote Coleman-Adebayo at her request, she filed suit against the agency, alleging racial and gender discrimination. On August 18, 2000, a federal jury found EPA guilty of violating the civil rights of Coleman-Adebayo on the basis of race, sex, color and a hostile work environment, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [1] Her experience inspired passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act).
During the legal proceedings, Coleman-Adebayo remained employed at the EPA. When she was diagnosed with hypertension, the agency agreed to let her remote work. After five years and another lawsuit, the EPA ordered Coleman-Adebayo to return to the office, placing her on unpaid leave when she did not comply. [1]
Coleman-Adebayo is a founder and leader of the No FEAR Coalition [1] and EPA Employees Against Racial Discrimination.[ citation needed ] Through her leadership the No FEAR Coalition, working closely with Representative James Sensenbrenner, organized a successful grass-roots campaign and secured passage of the "Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act," the first Civil Rights Law of the 21st Century. The Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002.[ citation needed ]
Coleman-Adebayo currently serves on the board of directors of the National Whistleblower Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit, advocacy group dedicated to protecting the rights of employee whistleblowers.[ citation needed ]Good Housekeeping presented her with its Women in Government award in 2003. [1] Her first book, "No Fear: A Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA" was published in September 2011 by Lawrence Hill Books.
As of April 2015, she also serves on the Green Shadow Cabinet of the United States as "Director of Governmental Transparency and Accountability". [2]
In June 2015, Coleman-Adebayo endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein while speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. [3]
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools and public accommodations, and employment discrimination. The act "remains one of the most significant legislative achievements in American history".
Carol Martha Browner is an American lawyer, environmentalist, and businesswoman, who served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. Browner previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. She currently works as a Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm.
Jill Ellen Stein is an American physician, activist, and politician. She was the Green Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 and 2016 elections and the Green-Rainbow Party's candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010. She is currently running for president in the 2024 United States presidential election.
The United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is a permanent independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency whose basic legislative authority comes from four federal statutes: the Civil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Hatch Act, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). OSC's primary mission is the safeguarding of the merit system in federal employment by protecting employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices (PPPs), especially reprisal for "whistleblowing." The agency also operates a secure channel for federal whistleblower disclosures of violations of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; abuse of authority; and substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. In addition, OSC issues advice on the Hatch Act and enforces its restrictions on partisan political activity by government employees. Finally, OSC protects the civilian employment and reemployment rights of military service members under USERRA. OSC has around 140 staff, and the Special Counsel is an ex officio member of Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an association of inspectors general charged with the regulation of good governance within the federal government.
The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), founded in 2004 by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in league with over 50 former and current United States government officials from more than a dozen agencies, is an independent, nonpartisan alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to address weaknesses of US security agencies.
The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) is an independent quasi-judicial agency established in 1979 to protect federal merit systems against partisan political and other prohibited personnel practices and to ensure adequate protection for federal employees against abuses by agency management.
Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto is a Washington, D.C.-based international whistleblower rights law firm specializing in anti-corruption and whistleblower law, representing whistleblowers who seek rewards, or who are facing employer retaliation, for reporting violations of the False Claims Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, Sarbanes-Oxley Acts, Commodity and Security Exchange Acts and the IRS Whistleblower law.
The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(8)-(9), Pub.L. 101-12 as amended, is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report the possible existence of an activity constituting a violation of law, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. A federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if agency authorities take retaliatory personnel action against any employee or applicant because of disclosure of information by that employee or applicant.
Sexual orientation discrimination is discrimination based on a person's sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy.
The Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 is a United States federal law that seeks to discourage federal managers and supervisors from engaging in unlawful discrimination and retaliation. It is popularly called the No-FEAR Act, and is also known as Public Law 107–174.
The Whistle blower Week is the name given to a series of events in Washington, D.C. meant to raise awareness about whistle blowing. There were two whistle blower weeks which took place in Washington in two different years.
The National Whistleblower Center (NWC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax exempt, educational and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1988 by the lawyers Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, LLP. As of June 2021, Siri Nelson is the executive director. Since its founding, the center has worked on whistleblower cases relating to environmental protection, nuclear safety, government and corporate accountability, and wildlife crime.
Jane Turner entered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a Special Agent in October 1978. She was assigned to the Seattle Division and became the first female SWAT member and the first female Profile Coordinator. She was involved in the capture of Christopher Boyce, and in the Green River Killer investigation.
The Hillsboro Police Department (HPD) is the municipal law enforcement agency of the city of Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. It is a regionally accredited agency with 127 sworn officers on the force. The chief is Jim Coleman in a city of over 90,000 residents west of Portland, Oregon, in Washington County. With 169 employees as of 2014, the department is the second largest police force in the county and seventh largest in Oregon.
Executive Order 11375, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 13, 1967, banned discrimination on the basis of sex in hiring and employment in both the United States federal workforce and on the part of government contractors.
A whistleblower is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct within an organization that is either private or public. The Whistleblower Protection Act was made into federal law in the United States in 1989.
The 2012 presidential campaign of Jill Stein was announced on October 24, 2011. Jill Stein, a physician from Massachusetts, gave indication in August 2011 that she was considering running for President of the United States with the Green Party in the 2012 national election. She wrote in a published questionnaire that she had been asked to run by a number of Green activists and felt compelled to consider the possibility after the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis which she called "the President's astounding attack on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – a betrayal of the public interest."
In law, wrongful dismissal, also called wrongful termination or wrongful discharge, is a situation in which an employee's contract of employment has been terminated by the employer, where the termination breaches one or more terms of the contract of employment, or a statute provision or rule in employment law. Laws governing wrongful dismissal vary according to the terms of the employment contract, as well as under the laws and public policies of the jurisdiction.
Jill Stein, a physician from Massachusetts, announced her entry into the 2016 United States presidential election on June 22, 2015. Stein had been the Green Party's presidential nominee in 2012, in which she received 469,627 votes. In the 2016 election, she once again secured the Green Party nomination and lost in the general election. She received 1.07% of the popular vote and no electoral college delegates.