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| Karla Gilbride |
Trump fired Gilbride and two Democratic EEOC commissioners, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, early last week. On Monday, Public Citizen Litigation Group announced she'd joined the organization and called her ouster "a broader attack by the administration on diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace."
Public Citizen didn't immediately make Gilbride or other leaders available for interviews Monday.
"President Trump fired me for doing the job the Senate confirmed me to do, which was to protect workers from discrimination and ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to reach their full potential in the workplace," Gilbride said in a statement.
"Firing people because they have advocated on behalf of those protected by our civil rights laws is a retaliatory and discriminatory act, and, unfortunately, I am far from the only person the president has targeted in this way," she said. "The president is not a king, and his power has limits within our constitutional system of checks and balances — checks and balances that, at Public Citizen, I will fight every day to preserve."
A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, Gilbride's career had included a stretch at nonprofit legal advocacy organization Public Justice as well as a job with Sanford Heisler Sharp LLP before the U.S. Senate confirmed her as the EEOC's general counsel in October 2023. She was the first blind person to lead the agency's litigation program.
Public Citizen Litigation Group describes itself as a public interest law firm and the litigating arm of Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy organization founded in 1971 by Ralph Nader.
The litigation group specializes in "issues involving consumer health and safety, consumer financial protection, access-to-courts issues such as forced arbitration and class-action standards, government transparency, and the First Amendment," the organization's website says.
"Karla has spent her legal career seeking to protect civil rights and hold powerful corporations accountable for their harmful actions," Allison Zieve, director of Public Citizen Litigation Group, said in a statement. "Her depth of experience and passion for justice will be an enormous asset to Public Citizen Litigation Group as we continue to use the law as a tool to stop abuses of power."
Some experts called the firings illegal and said the Supreme Court may end up reviewing them.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote a letter to the EEOC protesting the firings and demanding information, and sent a similar letter to protest Trump's firings of officials at the National Labor Relations Board.
--Additional reporting by Vin Gurrieri, Anne Cullen and Patrick Hoff. Editing by Brian Baresch.
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