From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Bushies above the law once again. Soon Guantanamo for whistleblowers?

http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=9530

The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower
protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to
legal documents released Monday by Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within
the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little
protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution
enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.

Citing an "unpublished opinion of the [Attorney General's] Office of
Legal Counsel," the Secretary of Labor's Administrative Review Board
has ruled federal employees may no longer pursue whistleblower claims under
the Clean Water Act. The opinion invoked the ancient doctrine of sovereign
immunity which is based on the old English legal maxim that "The King
Can Do No Wrong". It is an absolute defense to any legal action unless
the "sovereign" consents to be sued.
The opinion and the ruling reverse nearly two decades of precedent.
Approximately 170,000 federal employees working within environmental
agencies are affected by the loss of whistleblower rights.

 "The Bush administration is engineering the stealth repeal of whistleblower
protections," stated PEER General Counsel Richard Condit, who had won
several of the earlier cases applying environmental whistleblower
protections to federal specialists. "The use of an unpublished opinion
to change official interpretations is a giant step backward to the days of
the secret Star Chamber." PEER ultimately obtained a copy of the
opinion under the Freedom of Information Act.
At the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking
a more extreme position that absolutely no environmental laws protect its
employees from reprisal. EPA's stance would place the provisions of all
major federal environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Safe
Drinking Water Act, beyond the reach of federal employees seeking legal
protection for good faith efforts to enforce or implement the
anti-pollution provisions contained within those laws.

These actions arose in the case of Sharyn Erickson, an EPA employee who had
reported problems with agency contracts for toxic clean-ups. After
conducting a hearing, an administrative law judge called EPA's conduct
"reprehensible" and awarded Erickson $225,000 in punitive damages
but the Labor Secretary overturned that ruling.

"It is astonishing for the Bush administration to now suddenly claim
that it is above the law," said PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein,
who is handling Erickson's appeal of the Labor Secretary's ruling to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit based in Atlanta. "Congress
could end this debate by simply declaring that it intends that the
whistleblower protections of these anti-pollution laws apply to the federal
government."

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