The National Institutes of Health employee behind The Bethesda Declaration, a scathing public critique of the Trump administration’s cuts to biomedical research, sought federal whistle-blower protections on Monday, saying her superiors had retaliated against her by putting her on “nondisciplinary administrative leave.”
The employee, Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, was put on paid leave after the 43-day government shutdown ended in November. The complaint asks for “appropriate compensatory damages,” and for Dr. Norton to be reinstated.
Dr. Norton has carved out a profile as an outspoken critic of President Trump, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the N.I.H. director. She has participated in weekly protest “vigils” held on Saturdays just outside the agency’s campus, and helped organize an event that became part of the nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations in October.
She has also made numerous media appearances and given interviews criticizing the administration and the president who, she told NPR in October, “is asking us to do things that are illegal and harmful to the American public.” In a text message on Monday, she said she was “eager to return to the critical research my colleagues and I were doing before our work was dismantled.”
One of Dr. Norton’s lawyers, Debra S. Katz, described the decision to put Dr. Norton on leave as an act of “blatant” retaliation. “There was nothing subtle about it,” Ms. Katz said.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, the N.I.H.’s parent agency, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In November, Dr. Bhattacharya told an online publication, Just the News, that the health department had started an investigation of Dr. Norton’s “activities during the pandemic for potentially violating the anti-deficiency act,” which bars federal employees from spending money beyond what Congress appropriates. He also said she “potentially violated” N.I.H. communications policy, and did not have the “academic freedom” to speak out, because she is a program director, not a full-time research scientist.
But Ms. Katz said Dr. Norton “was fastidious to do her advocacy on her own time, not on work time,” adding, “She has a First Amendment right to speak out about matters of public concern.”
Dr. Norton specializes in the study of health disparities. As a program director, she conducts some research herself, but also oversees grants that include studies of racial disparities in health. Her work has gotten caught up in Mr. Trump’s executive order to end all government diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Soon after the order was issued in January, Dr. Norton and other N.I.H. employees were instructed to scrub terms like “health equity” and “race” from grant applications. In some cases, grants were denied or even canceled. Some academic researchers had to rewrite their proposals.
In a 21-page complaint to the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency, Dr. Norton’s lawyers say she was stunned to learn that a summary of a committee meeting she had helped lead was struck from the kidney institute’s website “because it contained unauthorized language.” A communications official “recommended that Dr. Norton remove from the summary the terms ‘health equity’ as well ‘race/racial/ethnic.’”
The complaint describes how Dr. Norton pushed back, arguing in staff meetings that Mr. Trump’s order was being interpreted too broadly.
Dr. Norton is not the first N.I.H. official to file such a complaint. In September, two other prominent scientists, also represented by Ms. Katz, said in whistle-blower complaints that they had been removed from leadership positions after objecting to administration actions.
One of those scientists, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was previously directed by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci. Ms. Katz said Dr. Marrazzo was fired 17 days after the whistle-blower complaint was filed, and is now suing.
Last spring, Dr. Norton organized The Bethesda Declaration, a public letter to Dr. Bhattacharya, the N.I.H. director. Signed by about 60 employees of the institutes, it denounced what its authors viewed as the administration’s dismantling of the federal biomedical research apparatus. It now has more than 32,000 signatures, including those of dozens of Nobel laureates.
The document was a nod to The Great Barrington Declaration, an anti-lockdown treatise cowritten by Dr. Bhattacharya during the pandemic, when he was a Stanford University medical economist. Dr. Norton emailed it to Dr. Bhattacharya when the declaration was posted online in June.
“We dissent to administration policies that undermine the N.I.H. mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe,” the four-page letter said. “Many have raised these concerns to N.I.H. leadership, yet we remain pressured to implement harmful measures.”
Dr. Bhattacharya is scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Sensitive to the way he and his Great Barrington co-authors were dismissed by N.I.H. leaders including Dr. Fauci, Dr. Bhattacharya promised during his confirmation hearings to create a culture that encouraged openness and tolerated dissent. After The Bethesda Declaration was issued, he invited its authors to meet with him, but Dr. Norton was excluded.
When the government shutdown ended in November, Dr. Norton tried to return to work, only to be notified that she was being placed on paid leave for nondisciplinary reasons.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers health policy for The Times from Washington. A former congressional and White House correspondent, she focuses on the intersection of health policy and politics.
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