A former US Forest Service (USFS) contractor employee asked a federal appeals judge to review his rejected whistleblower complaint, citing temporary legal protections granted to federal contract workers.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) said on Monday that it filed the litigation on behalf of Terry Schaedig, who alleged he was terminated for reporting “gross mismanagement” of federal lands by his boss.
In a US Department of Agriculture whistleblower retaliation complaint lodged in 2014 by Schaedig, he claimed to have earned the ire of superiors earlier that year for reporting violations of contract terms designed to protect fragile wildlife and historical sites. The Department of Agriculture oversees USFS.
PEER noted that Schaedig’s request is based on a law set to expire in July 2017. In 2013, when Congress passed the annual defense policy bill, it bestowed employees of federal contractors with enhanced protections for the proper disclosure of institutional wrongdoing.
“We are concerned that the whistleblower rights for millions of contract workers may fade into the sunset before they are discovered, let alone utilized,” PEER attorney Laura Dumais said. “This is a pilot program that has yet to leave the hangar.”
Dumais also noted that “[m]uch of the public’s business is accomplished under contracts for which there are few meaningful quality controls.”
Before his dismissal, Shaedig had worked for the National Wild Turkey Federation, a hunting-focused conservation non-profit based in South Carolina.
His case centers around an initiative spearheaded by the USFS ” to enhance wildlife habitat in the Ottawa
National Forest,” in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Read PEER’s press release announcing Shaedig’s suit here. Read Shaedig’s 2014 whistleblower retaliation complaint here.
