TDFP Exclusive: 17 CIA Officers Sue Director John Ratcliffe, Say He Sidelined Them Over DEI Assignments
Seventeen CIA officers who say they have been sent home with no work for more than 630 days are suing CIA Director John Ratcliffe, saying he removed them over temporary assignments to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs and overruled senior agency officials who wanted to send them back to their regular jobs.
The officers filed the 53-page complaint on Oct. 17 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, against the CIA and Ratcliffe in his official capacity. They are identified only as Jane Does 1 through 11 and John Does 1 through 6, which the complaint says was done "to both protect the identity of CIA employees and to comply with an Agency request." The Digital Free Press found no news report on the lawsuit.
What the Lawsuit Says About John Ratcliffe
According to the complaint, the officers were placed on paid administrative leave on Jan. 22, 2025, two days after President Trump signed Executive Order 14151, which directed agencies to end DEI programs and offices. They were barred from CIA facilities without escorts and have had no duties since, the complaint says. It says the leave began one day before Ratcliffe was sworn in on Jan. 23, 2025, and that he made the decision in consultation with the agency's chief operating officer and associate director for talent.
The lawsuit calls Ratcliffe "the principal discriminatory and retaliatory actor" in the case. It says senior CIA officials, including the chief operating officer and the associate director for talent, told him the agency does not have "DEIA Employees" and that anyone doing that work was a career officer on a rotation from elsewhere in the CIA.
The complaint says the agency's Talent Center prepared a binder for leadership titled "Officers on Administrative Leave," listing each officer's skills and a "potential onward assignment." According to the filing, Ratcliffe "determined that he would not reassign any affected officers" and instead told CIA leaders to present officers who had worked in the Diversity and Inclusion Office with options that included retirement, resignation or termination.
"Director Ratcliffe is believed to have overruled the CIA's senior management and EEO staff, which cautioned that the employees he was seeking to terminate were valuable Agency assets and were not actually 'DEIA' personnel," the complaint says.
On Feb. 18, 2025, according to the complaint, Ratcliffe signed a memo titled "Decision to Terminate the Employment of Employees in the Former Diversity and Inclusion Office," using his authority under the National Security Act. The complaint quotes the memo: "I have determined that it is necessary or advisable in the interests of the United States to terminate the employment of all of the employees of the former DIO." The lawsuit says Ratcliffe "has yet to actually terminate" the officers, which it attributes to separate litigation testing his authority.
Sent Home for More Than 630 Days
The officers say they were "highly trained national security generalists" with "a collective total of over 247 years of Agency experience" in fields including finance, security, intelligence analysis, data science, cyber development and cartography. They say they committed no misconduct, had no performance problems and were never disciplined. "The 630+ days in this employment brig is clearly designed to force the Plaintiffs to quit," the complaint says.
According to the complaint, about $4 million in taxpayer money has been paid to the officers while they have been kept from working. The lawsuit says officers assigned to the Diversity and Inclusion Office were told to destroy their DEIA-related work, and that some officers who did similar work outside that office were never put on leave.
"Perhaps not coincidentally, all of the Plaintiffs in this action happen to be members of protected classes," the complaint says. It adds that "the culprit behind those policies was not the employees, but the Agency that directed the employees to carry them out."
How This Case Differs From the 19-Officer Case
This is not the first lawsuit over the CIA's DEI officers. In February 2025, Fox News reported that a federal judge temporarily blocked the firing of 11 CIA officers in a case brought by lawyer Kevin Carroll. By July 2, 2026, that case involved 19 CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence officers, and that day a divided panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an order requiring the agencies to let them seek reassignment and appeal internally, Reuters reported. Reuters said 58 CIA and ODNI officers had been placed on leave.
That case rested mainly on due process and the agencies' own rules. The new lawsuit, filed by different lawyers, Patriots Law Group of Lyons & Hughes in Alexandria, centers on federal anti-discrimination law. It brings 10 counts, including retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Rehabilitation Act, race, national origin, religion and sex discrimination under Title VII, age discrimination, and claims under the Administrative Procedure Act, the First and Fifth Amendments and the Administrative Leave Act. The officers say they first went through the CIA's internal complaint process, with final agency decisions arriving as early as July 20, 2026.
The complaint does not say whether any of the 17 officers are also part of the earlier case.
What the Officers Want
The officers ask the court to reinstate them, restore their security clearances and building access, and remove any reference to the leave or terminations from their personnel files. They also seek back pay, front pay if reinstatement is not possible, lost benefits, compensatory damages for emotional distress, and attorney's fees. They demand a jury trial.
The complaint says the officers plan to amend it with more details about their careers once a CIA pre-publication review is finished.
Kevin Byrnes, an attorney for the officers, told The Digital Free Press in a phone interview Monday that the CIA is punishing the officers for carrying out assignments the agency itself gave them, after later deciding the DEI work was against policy. Byrnes said the case is tied to the earlier lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence over whether the government has the right to fire them. TDFP has asked the CIA for comment and will update this story.
Sources: Complaint, Jane Doe 1 et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency and John L. Ratcliffe, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, No. 1:26-cv-03461, filed Oct. 17, 2026: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.608419/gov.uscourts.vaed.608419.1.0.pdf ; Fox News, "Federal judge temporarily stops Trump admin from firing 11 intelligence officers assigned to DEI programs" (February 2025): https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-judge-temporarily-stops-trump-admin-from-firing-11-intelligence-officers-assigned-dei-programs ; Reuters, "Fourth Circuit prevents firing of 19 intelligence officers assigned to DEI programs" (July 2, 2026, via Virginia Lawyers Weekly): https://valawyersweekly.com/2026/07/02/fourth-circuit-blocks-firing-intelligence-officers-dei/
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