Executive Office of the President of the United States
President Donald Trump and Brooke Rollins in 2018. Rollins is currently Trump’s secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A union representing more than 19,000 employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is suing the agency. It accuses Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins of violating employees’ First Amendment rights through a campaign of religious coercion.
The National Federation of Federal Employees filed the lawsuit, in conjunction with seven individual USDA employees.
“Plaintiffs – a group of multifaith and nonreligious USDA employees … are subject to the effects of that coercion, religious sermonizing, and denominational preference,” the complaint reads. “They feel excluded and unwelcome, and they fear the negative consequences of not sharing the Secretary’s religion or expressing their own different beliefs in the workplace.”
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Rollins is one of two cabinet secretaries from Texas serving in the second Trump administration. In her home state, Christian nationalism has become a central theme in Republican primary runoff campaigns ahead of the May 26 election.
The legal complaint, filed Wednesday in a federal court in California, claims the communications reached a new level with an April 5, 2026, email to employees, marking Easter and promoting the secretary’s evangelical Christian theology.
“Today we celebrate the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind,” the email began. “From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed. Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life. And where there is life — risen life—there is hope.”
Rachel Laser is president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, whose attorneys are representing the plaintiffs. She argued Rollins’ actions form part of a pattern on behalf of leading Trump administration officials — including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, now-former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and President Donald Trump himself — using government channels to promote a particular, evangelical strain of Christianity, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“It’s indeed profoundly un-American,” Laser said. “I want to reiterate that Trump is not Jesus. Agencies are not churches and cabinet secretaries are not government preachers.”
The plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction barring Rollins and the USDA from sending proselytizing messages to employees as well as a declaratory judgment that Rollins’ messages violate the Establishment Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Christian nationalism is a divisive perversion of faith that is about who gets to properly belong in the country and who doesn’t. It is an attempt at fusing religious identity with a partisan political identity — that you’re either in or you’re out, you’re with us or you’re not,” said Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward, whose attorneys are also part of the plaintiffs’ legal team. “That is not the America we deserve, and it is not the democracy our Constitution protects, and it is a perversion of the teachings of Christianity.”
In a statement to Houston Public Media, a spokesperson for the Agriculture Department said, “While we do not comment on pending litigation, we will keep the plaintiffs in our prayers during this process.”