Meet the federal worker who went rogue: ‘I hope that it lights a fire
under people’
[March 10, 2025]
By CLAIRE SAVAGE
NEW YORK (AP) — To billionaire Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team at
the Department of Government Efficiency, Karen Ortiz may just be one of
many faceless bureaucrats. But to some of her colleagues, she is giving
a voice to those who feel they can't speak out.
Ortiz is an administrative judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission -- the federal agency in charge of enforcing U.S. workplace
anti-discrimination laws that has undergone tumultuous change since
President Donald Trump took office. Like millions of other federal
employees, Ortiz opened an ominous email on Jan. 28 titled “Fork in the
Road" giving them the option to resign from their positions as part of
the government’s cost-cutting measures directed by Trump and carried out
by DOGE under Musk, an unelected official.
Her alarm grew when her supervisor directed administrative judges in her
New York district office to pause all their current LGBTQ+ cases and
send them to Washington for further review in order to comply with
Trump's executive order declaring that the government would recognize
only two “immutable” sexes — male and female.
Ortiz decried management’s lack of action in response to the directive,
which she said was antithetical to the EEOC’s mission, and called upon
some 185 colleagues in an email to “resist” complying with “illegal
mandates.” But that email was “mysteriously” deleted, she said.
The next day, after yet another frustrating “Fork in the Road” update,
Ortiz decided to go big, emailing the EEOC's acting chair Andrea Lucas
directly and copying more than 1,000 colleagues with the subject line,
“A Spoon is Better than a Fork." In it, Ortiz questioned Lucas's fitness
to serve as acting chair, “much less hold a license to practice law.”
“I know I take a great personal risk in sending out this message. But,
at the end of the day, my actions align with what the EEOC was charged
with doing under the law,” Ortiz wrote. “I will not compromise my ethics
and my duty to uphold the law. I will not cower to bullying and
intimidation.”
Ortiz is just one person, but her email represents a larger pushback
against the Trump administration’s sweeping changes to federal agencies
amid an environment of confusion, anger and chaos. It is also Ortiz’s
way of taking a stand against the leadership of a civil rights agency
that last month moved to dismiss seven of its own cases representing
transgender workers, marking a major departure from its prior
interpretation of the law.
Right after sending her mass email, Ortiz said she received a few
supportive responses from colleagues -- and one calling her
unprofessional. Within an hour, though, the message disappeared and she
lost her ability to send any further emails.
But it still made it onto the internet. The email was recirculated on
Bluesky and it received more than 10,000 “upvotes” on Reddit after
someone posted it with the comment, “Wow I wish I had that courage.”
“AN AMERICAN HERO,” one Reddit user deemed Ortiz, a sentiment that was
seconded by more than 2,000 upvoters. “Who is this freedom fighter
bringing on the fire?" wrote another.
The EEOC did not feel the same way. The agency revoked her email
privileges for about a week and issued her a written reprimand for
“discourteous conduct.”
Contacted by The AP, a spokesperson for the EEOC said: “We will refrain
from commenting on internal communications and personnel matters.
However, we would note that the agency has a long-standing policy
prohibiting unauthorized all-employee emails, and all employees were
reminded of that policy recently.”
A month later, Ortiz has no regrets.
“It was not really planned out, it was just from the heart,” the
53-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview, adding that
partisan politics have nothing to do with her objections and that the
public deserves the EEOC's protection, including transgender workers.
“This is how I feel and I’m not pulling any punches. And I will stand by
what I wrote every day of the week, all day on Sunday.”
Ortiz said she never intended for her email to go beyond the EEOC,
describing it as a “love letter” to her colleagues. But, she added, “I
hope that it lights a fire under people.”
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Karen Ortiz, an administrative judge at the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, poses for photos, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025,
in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Ortiz said she has received “a ton” of support privately in the
month since sending her email, including a thank-you letter from a
California retiree telling her to “keep the faith.” Open support
among her EEOC colleagues beyond Reddit and Bluesky, however, has
proven more elusive.
“I think people are just really scared,” she said.
William Resh, a University of Southern California Sol Price School
of Public Policy professor who studies how administrative structure
and political environments affect civil servants, weighed in on why
federal workers may choose to say nothing even if they feel their
mission is being undermined.
“We can talk pie in the sky, mission orientation and all these other
things. But at the end of the day, people have a paycheck to bring
home, and food to put on a table and a rent to pay,” Resh said.
The more immediate danger, he said, is the threat to one's
livelihood, or inviting a manager's ire.
“And so then that’s where you get this kind of muted response on
behalf of federal employees, that you don’t see a lot of people
speaking out within these positions because they don’t want to lose
their job,” Resh said. “Who would?”
Richard LeClear, a U.S. Air Force veteran and EEOC staffer who is
retiring early at 64 to avoid serving under the Trump
administration, said Ortiz’s email was “spot on,” but added that
other colleagues who agreed with her may fear speaking out
themselves.
“Retaliation is a very real thing,” LeClear said.
Ortiz, who has been a federal employee for 14 years and at the EEOC
for six, said she isn’t naive about the potential fallout. She has
hired attorneys, and maintains that her actions are protected
whistleblower activity. As of Friday, she still had a job but she is
not a lifetime appointee and is aware that her health care, pension
and source of income could all be at risk.
Ortiz is nonetheless steadfast: “If they fire me, I’ll find another
avenue to do this kind of work, and I’ll be okay. They will have to
physically march me out of the office.”
Many of Ortiz’s colleagues have children to support and protect,
which puts them in a more difficult position than her to speak out,
Ortiz acknowledged. She said her legal education and American
citizenship also put her in a position to be able to make change.
Her parents, who came to the United States from Puerto Rico in the
1950s with limited English skills, ingrained in her the value of
standing up for others. Their firsthand experience with the Civil
Rights Movement, and her own experience growing up in mostly white
spaces in Garden City on Long Island, primed Ortiz to defend herself
and others.
“It’s in my DNA,” she said. “I will use every shred of privilege
that I have to lean into this.”
Ortiz received her undergraduate degree at Columbia University, and
her law degree at Fordham University. She knew she wanted to become
a judge ever since her high school mock trial as a Supreme Court
justice.
Civil rights has been a throughline in her career, and Ortiz said
she was “super excited” when she landed her job at the EEOC.
“This is how I wanted to finish up my career," she said. “We’ll see
if that happens.”
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