Trump’s Controversial Remarks Fuel Lawsuit: Ousted USAID Workers Cite Legal Violations

A group of former USAID employees has initiated a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump administration of illegal age discrimination. They claim that an effort was made to replace experienced staff with younger workers favored by DOGE, an action they argue unjustly targeted older employees.

In a detailed 124-page lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., nearly 80 pages list the plaintiffs, who are former foreign service employees aged between their 40s and 60s.

The suit was brought against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the State Department, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was the acting administrator of USAID from February to August 2025, when Elon Musk took his chainsaw to an agency he called “criminal,” declaring it was time “for it to die.” Amy Gleason, the acting DOGE administrator now, was also sued.

The lawsuit alleges that the administration’s restructuring of USAID led to the loss of significant institutional knowledge and expertise, as seasoned employees were replaced under the guise of eliminating “dinosaurs” in favor of “younger, more energetic, and more tech-savvy” personnel.

An individual nicknamed “Big Balls,” a 19-year-old employee reportedly appointed by Musk DOGE, was notably involved in the dismissals, the lawsuit claims.

The complaint argues that referring to older workers as “dinosaurs” suggests obsolescence and was a clear indication of discriminatory motives. It highlights that older employees were subjected to a public and demeaning process, where a young employee like “Big Balls” was given a prominent role in their termination, with his youthful persona being celebrated by those in charge.

But the tone was set from the top, with President Donald Trump praising DOGE and Musk because he “attracts a young, very smart type of person,” the complaint further alleged.

“As the Defendants’ derogatory language towards older workers reverberated, other high-ranking officials adopted and endorsed the same age-based messaging to justify the terminations at USAID,” the filing said. “Sources close to the administration boldly stated that: ‘[t]his is a Gen Z, millennial takeover of the federal government,’ adding that DOGE, by conducting mass firings, was addressing ‘the geriatric, the kind of nursing home regime that has been pushing the country into oblivion. Now the young guns are taking over the country for the better.’”

The problem with the administration’s “messaging campaign to convince the public to put [a] premium on the youth and vigor of the officials behind the terminations, as juxtaposed to the claimed age-related lethargy of the employees they were terminating” is that it revealed the “unlawful attack” for what it was, “evidence of direct and intentional age discrimination” under the guise of reducing the deficit, the plaintiffs claimed.

“As part of this age-related truncation of workers, the persons responsible routinely peddled in code words indicative of age discrimination, including transition towards a more tech-savvy federal workforce, closely associated with youth. In fact, some of the decision making in terminating these employees appear to have been carried out by neophytes to federal service in their twenties,” the lawsuit continued. “The messaging and conduct employed was intended to, and did, create intolerable working conditions for older workers, replete with specific efforts to force them into resignation or early retirement.”

Worse yet, the plaintiffs alleged, they were lied to when they were told their “positions were not being retained.” Rather, they were or are being replaced by “younger cheaper counterparts.”

“[T]he Defendants have sought, and continue to seek, new, younger employees to conduct the same or similar functions as Plaintiffs,” the complaint stated. “This has been done at the Department of State through a discriminatory job screening pattern and practice, that disproportionately disqualifies older employees and is intended to exclude Plaintiffs from returning to work for the federal government. The Department of State’s ongoing recruitment for the same and similar positions from which Plaintiffs were terminated solidifies the pretextual nature of the [reductions in force, or RIF] that upended Plaintiffs’ lives and unlawfully destroyed their retirement plans and benefits. It is a ruse to replace older established workers with greater salary and benefits with younger cheaper counterparts.”

As a result, the civil lawsuit brought seven counts against the administration, several of them alleging violations of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The last count claimed the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it knew most of the workers it fired were 40 or older and yet “failed to assess the adverse impact of an abrupt, arbitrary, and pretextual RIF on this older workforce and failed to take any meaningful steps to mitigate the harmful impact of the RIF on older workers.”