“Indeed, when Ms. Oyer declined to disregard her duties in order to perform a favor for her politically-appointed superiors and President Trump, she was summarily terminated,” the lawsuit says.
A former Justice Department attorney who says that she was fired after refusing to recommend the restoration of actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights has filed a lawsuit challenging her termination, describing it as unlawful retaliation for her unwillingness to grant a “political favor” to a personal friend of President Donald Trump.
According to The Associated Press, Liz Oyer, a former pardons attorney with the Justice Department, said that she lost her job in March 2025 shortly after declining a request from the office of then-Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche to add Gibson to a list of individuals for whom the agency would recommend the restoration of Second Amendment rights.
Oyer said that she made her decision for public safety reasons, citing the domestic violence conviction that had originally cost Gibson his right to possess firearms.
The lawsuit says that, hours after Oyer drafted a memo documenting her concerns, a colleague pulled her out of a meeting; she was then handed a termination letter by Justice Department security personnel and escorted from the building.
Blanche, for his part, has contested Oyer’s account, saying at his Senate confirmation hearing last month that he was never informed of the termination.
“I didn’t even know of that,” Blanche told the Senate. “I had known nothing about Mel Gibson or that letter when I fired her. Nothing.”
Oyer, though, says that she sued only after the Merits System Protection Board, which handles personnel claims, left her case in “prolonged limbo” before declining to take action.
“If career officials like me can be fired for refusing to bend the rules to serve the president’s friends, then the message toe very public servant is clear: loyalty to a politician matters more than loyalty to the Constitution,” Oyer said in a statement. “I cannot accept that.”
Oyer’s lawsuit suggests that her firing violated civil service protections for career federal employees as well as her First Amendment rights, as she believes that “the removal was taken, in part, based on Ms. Oyer’s perceived political affiliation.”
“Indeed, when Ms. Oyer declined to disregard her duties in order to perform a favor for her politically-appointed superiors and President Trump, she was summarily terminated,” the lawsuit says.
Blanche, in contrast, claims that she lost her job “for a number of reasons.”
“The decisions that she had made [as] pardon attorney in the weeks and months leading up to the end of President Biden’s term were completely inconsistent with President Trump’s authority, including recommending commuting every single individual on death row, which even President Biden didn’t do,” Blanche said in his Senate confirmation hearing.
The Associated Press notes that, shortly before leaving office, Biden did, in fact, announce that he would commute the sentences of 37 out of the 40 people who were then on federal death row, changing their sentences to life imprisonment. Biden left intact the sentences of Dylan Roof, who murdered nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; convicted terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, along with his deceased brother, committed the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013; and Robert Bowers, who shot and killed 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
Oyer is now asking that the court declare her removal unlawful, reinstate her position, provide compensation for the pay and benefits which she lost as a result her firing. Oyer has also requested a court order prohibiting the Justice Department from taking any “further adverse personnel action” against her “without the protections required by law.”
“This case is about much more than what happened to me,” Oyer said in a statement released by her legal team. “I was fired because I refused to put my politics ahead of my duty to the American people.”
Sources
Former pardon attorney sues DOJ for firing over Mel Gibson gun rights case
Former pardon attorney sues DoJ over ‘unlawful’ firing tied to Mel Gibson case
Justice Department pardon lawyer who says she was fired in dispute over Mel Gibson’s gun rights sues
