Ag Sec Brooke Rollins Sued By USDA Employees Just For Doing A Little Christian Nationalism
No one told her this wasn't a theocracy, I guess.
Does the Establishment Clause apply to Trump officials? Even those who are really, really special and really, really, really want to spread the gospel of their lord and savior Jesus Christ?
I guess we’ll find out soon, as several employees of the United States Department of Agriculture, along with the National Federation of Federal Employees, are suing Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins for aggressively proselytizing to them via email.
USDA employees say that while Rollins’s emails had initially been religious, but more casual and non-denominational in nature — still not good, actually! — they have become increasingly intense and pushy over time, starting with the sermon she sent out before Easter. They say they can’t just avoid Rollins’s proselytizing, because they have to read the emails, as she is the head of their department and they could include important work-related information. When one of the plaintiffs specifically asked if there was a way she could just get the work-related emails and not Rollins’s sermons, it did not go well.
According to the lawsuit:
When [plaintiff Lanette] Dietrich asked her supervisor to remove her from USDA’s distribution lists used for religious and faith-based messages (but to continue receiving work-related communications), her request was elevated to the Director of the Policy and Accountability Division at the National Resources Conservation Service, who told her that this was not possible, and further threatened that elevating her request to the Chief of the National Resources Conservation Service would “create trouble” for Ms. Dietrich.
Oh good! Threats! How normal.
Rollins has already defended her “Easter Sermon” in the press, saying that it is normal for agency heads to issue holiday greetings. “The Secretary is within her rights to send a message to employees and the public on the Easter holiday. Just like Secretaries of Agriculture and Presidents have in the past,” a spokesperson for the Secretary told CNBC.
Sure! Fine! But there’s a pretty big difference between “Have a Hoppy Easter!” and, well, this:
Team USDA, Happy Easter — He is risen indeed! Today we celebrate the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.
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. No matter the very real trials and hardships we face, fear and sin and death do not get the last word. Because on Easter morning, “Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.” Now that is reason to rejoice! And so like the very first disciples to encounter our risen Lord in the Upper Room almost two thousand years ago, this Easter let us too be alive with hope, full of Paschal joy, and confident in the mission each of us has been called for.
Please know how amazed and grateful I am for the hard work each of you do to support our shared mission here at USDA. I hope you and your loved ones have a truly blessed and happy Easter. May God continue to bless you, your families, and our exceptional country, One Nation, Under God.
You’ll notice that I bolded a few words there. That is because the primary issue raised by the the plaintiffs is that Rollins’s missives make it clear that she expects people who work for her to share her brand of Christianity and that those who do not share her beliefs are not part of her “in group.” They say they worry that if they publicly share that they hold different beliefs (or even that they hold the same beliefs but don’t think it’s appropriate for work), that this will be held against them.
And let’s be real, it probably would! If someone would find themselves in trouble for simply wishing to unsubscribe to the secretary’s religious rantings, then certainly they might face retaliation for openly not sharing her beliefs. If Rollins doesn’t know that it’s absurdly inappropriate to send out an email like that to her employees, then she may well not know or grasp that she’s not supposed to discriminate against or fire employees for not sharing her religious beliefs.
As the lawsuit explains, “Secretary Rollins’s religious messages to all USDA employees, including the Easter Sermon, are unconstitutionally coercive because they exploit her authority as the head of the agency to proselytize and pressure the USDA workforce to believe in her brand of Christianity. The Secretary’s missives impose religious beliefs and practices on a captive audience of employees, thereby pressuring employees to succumb to proselytization, to subscribe to or to pretend they subscribe to Christianity, and/or to censor themselves in the workplace.”
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Rollins has previously said that her original plan was to go to seminary and be a youth minister.
“Through all the years — as an agricultural major at Texas A&M and then earning a law degree at the University of Texas, I really thought I’d end up at seminary and be a youth minister, that’s where my heart was,” she told the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Decision magazine in 2025.
If that’s where her heart is, then perhaps she should go and do that instead of, you know, holding a secular job in the US Department of Agriculture — especially considering that she is not remotely qualified for the latter, as she has not held any agriculture-related position since her tenure in 4H and the Future Farmers of America. Clearly, she is very qualified to shove her religion in people’s faces, so she should get a job where she can do that in a consensual manner.
No one is saying that Brooke Rollins cannot let her Jesus freak flag fly. We do, after all, have freedom of religion. But legally, she cannot proselytize to the people she works for while working at the US Department of Agriculture, or even in any private business with more than 15 employees. At least not until or unless the Trump adminsistration succeeds in burning the Constitution and Rollins and those like her get the theocracy of their dreams.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
If a Muslim supervisor had rhapsodized like that about the Prophet Muhammed, guess who would have lost their minds?
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Great Priapus' Prepuce, people! Let him have it! It'll be swamped when the sea levels rise.