Employees already suing U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins over religious freedom violations have urged a judge to stop her continued proselytizing through agency-wide emails as litigation continues.
The plaintiffs in National Federation of Federal Employees v. USDA filed a motion July 22 for a preliminary injunction to keep Rollins and other USDA officials “from sending or otherwise communicating messages that proselytize, promote or favor any particular religion during the pendency of this litigation.”
The most recent examples included Rollins’ use of Memorial Day and Independence Day to send emails quoting Bible passages. On social media, she described the May filing of the lawsuit against her as “just another opportunity to remind everyone: He is Risen.”
Rollins is exploiting her position to spread “textbook Christian nationalism” to USDA’s 100,000 employees, the workers said through their attorneys at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Democracy Forward and Bryan Schwartz Law.
“Now she’s infusing her version of Christianity into emails about secular holidays meant to honor our nation’s independence and Americans who died in service to our country,”
“Not only is Secretary Rollins emailing employees sermons to mark Christian holidays, but now she’s infusing her version of Christianity into emails about secular holidays meant to honor our nation’s independence and Americans who died in service to our country,” plaintiff Ashley Miller said. “There’s no escape from her proselytizing — I’m required to read agency emails as part of my job. But now I worry any work email I open from the Office of the Secretary might contain more preaching, which makes me feel unwelcome at the agency I’ve served for nearly a decade.”
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California seeks an end to religiously abusive actions that violate the separation of church and state.
“She has adopted a practice of sending increasingly proselytizing communications to the entire USDA workforce, promoting her own preferred brand of Christian beliefs and theology to the captive audience of employees that report to her, directly or indirectly,” the lawsuit explains.
“The secretary’s practice reached a crescendo with her April 5, 2026, Easter email, in which she heralded ‘the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.’ The secretary extolled ‘the foot of the Cross on Good Friday,’ ‘sin’ being ‘destroyed,’ ‘Hell’ having “(taken) a body, and discovered God,’ and Jesus being ‘raised from the dead.’ She described her USDA subordinates as being ‘like the very first disciples to encounter our risen Lord … almost two thousand years ago.’”
“This the Establishment Clause does not countenance,” the lawsuit adds. “Our nation’s Founders — having learned from the harmful effects of past religious conflicts — adopted the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to safeguard against government promoting any favored religion or imposing its preferred religious practice on its citizens to protect religious freedom for all.”
Rollins’ faith-based emails are everything the Constitution and country are against, Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said.
“Proselytizing from public office is antithetical to core national principles of religious liberty, and the Trump-Vance administration’s bias toward Christian nationalists is a grave threat to our democracy,” she said.
The need for the preliminary injunction is as critical to protecting employees’ constitutional rights as the lawsuit itself, Americans United President Rachel Laser said.
“We urge the court to protect federal workers’ religious freedom and stop Secretary Rollins from abusing the power of her public office to impose her beliefs on others. Across the federal government, the Trump administration has misused taxpayer resources to preach, hold government-sponsored prayer services during work time, and broadcast Christian nationalism over official communications channels. Not on our watch.”
Previously, Rollins was co-founder of America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank originally staffeAd with people from the first Trump administration after he lost re-election in 2020. Although Rollins portrays herself as a devout Christian, there is no mention in any of her biographical material about church membership.