WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Justice Department pardon attorney who says she was fired after she refused to recommend the restoration of actor Mel Gibson's gun rights sued Thursday over her termination, calling it illegal punishment for her unwillingness to grant a “political favor” to a friend of President Donald Trump.
Liz Oyer says in her lawsuit that her March 2025 firing came after she declined a request from the staff of then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to add Gibson to a list of individuals for whom the Justice Department would recommend the reinstatement of their gun rights. Oyer says she objected for public safety reasons given Gibson's prior domestic violence conviction that had resulted in the loss of his gun privileges.
The lawsuit says that hours after she drafted a memo conveying her concerns, a colleague pulled her out of a meeting and Justice Department security officers handed her a termination letter, instructed her to pack her belongings and escorted her from the building.
Blanche has denied Oyer's account of the basis for her termination, saying at his Senate confirmation hearing last month for the attorney general position that he now holds: “I didn’t even know of that. I had known nothing about Mel Gibson or that letter when I fired her. Nothing.”
Oyer's lawsuit, the latest in a series by Justice Department staffers challenging Trump administration terminations that they deem unlawful, was filed after she says the Merit Systems Protection Board — which handles personnel claims — had left her case in “prolonged limbo” and declined to take action on her complaint.
She said in a statement that her lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Washington and seeks a court order declaring her firing unlawful and reinstating her to federal service, was about not only her but about the ability of all civil servants “to uphold the law without fear or favor.”
“If career officials like me can be fired for refusing to bend the rules to serve the president’s friends, then the message to every public servant is clear: loyalty to a politician matters more than loyalty to the Constitution. I cannot accept that,” she said.
Oyer maintains in her lawsuit that her firing violated civil service protections for career employees as well as her First Amendment free speech rights “because 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.
In denying her claims at his confirmation hearing last month, Blanche said that Oyer was fired “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 at his confirmation hearing.
Before leaving office, Biden announced that he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people who were on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.
He left in place the death sentences of Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.
Oyer testified in opposition to Blanche's nomination, where Republican senators pressed her on her recommendations.
She told senators that Blanche's comments marked the first time that she had ever heard the explanation that she was fired because of recommendations on sentence commutations. She said the assertion that her firing was unrelated to Mel Gibson “materialized out of thin air and has never been stated before.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche during a television interview outside the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - Former Justice Department attorneys Liz Oyer participates in a hearing on the Justice Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would strip private schools and colleges of their tax-exempt status if they provide targeted help to students based on their race, a significant escalation in the White House's campaign to eradicate diversity programs directed at Black, Hispanic and other minority students.
The Treasury Department proposed the change Thursday in a new regulation that, if made final, would kick in after May 2027. The rule is broadly aimed at ending any policies or programs that help students because of their race, and it specifically says such benefits in admissions, scholarships and facilities “would be incompatible” with the rule.
It’s the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pressure schools and colleges to weed out diversity, equity and inclusion policies that had become common before President Donald Trump returned to the White House with a promise to end them. Trump officials have used Civil Rights-era laws to unwind the policies, saying they discriminate against white and Asian American students.
Higher education leaders criticized the proposal.
“The administration’s latest rules changes are its most blatant attack to keep working class Americans and people of color from accessing higher education and a better life,” Mike Gavin, Alliance for Higher Education president and CEO, said in a statement. “By claiming that efforts to increase fair opportunity for all students are discriminatory, the administration is trying to gaslight the American people into believing that up is down and black is white.”
Scores of universities have shut down or rebranded their DEI offices and ended scholarships and clubs designed for minority students under pressure from the White House. In a statement announcing the proposal, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that even policies that are no longer under the banner of DEI could be targeted.
“Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature,” Bessent said.
The Treasury Department and IRS estimate that up to 18,000 private schools, colleges and other education institutions could be affected by the proposal.
America’s private universities have been exempt from many taxes for more than a century because they provide a public good. The benefit saves many universities millions of dollars every year.
Trump has seen the tax-exempt status as a lever to pull in his pressure campaign against colleges that he describes as hotbeds of “wokeness.” He threatened to cut the benefit for Harvard University last year during his battle with the nation’s oldest college. In a response, Harvard officials said there was no legal basis for doing so and argued it would force cuts to financial aid and crucial medical research.
It’s incredibly rare for the federal government to go after a college’s tax-exempt status, but there’s one notable precedent. Bob Jones University, a small Christian school in South Carolina, lost the benefit in the 1970s over a ban on interracial dating and marriage on campus. The Supreme Court upheld the IRS’s decision to deny the school its exemption. The school has since ended the ban and regained tax-exempt status in 2017.
Laws forbid the IRS from targeting individuals and organizations for ideological reasons, and federal officials are not allowed to direct IRS investigations.
To maintain nonprofit status, which allows donations to be tax-deductible, organizations must follow IRS rules on lobbying, political campaign activity and annual reporting requirements, as well as other obligations.
The Trump administration describes the new proposal as a move toward restoring merit in the nation’s education systems.
Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, said the change would most likely impact donations, which are often earmarked for scholarships.
The uncertainty around the proposal also will create challenges for schools, said Tim Powers, a vice president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
“Our institutions are committed to complying with applicable civil rights laws and maintaining safe and supportive campuses free from discrimination,” Powers said. “However, the proposed rule may create new compliance burdens and legal uncertainties for institutions of higher education that are already operating in line with existing nondiscrimination rules.”
The Justice Department has separately opened investigations into several medical schools that it accuses of favoring Black and Hispanic students in admissions. Trump officials say any such favoritism violates Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that forbids discrimination in education and was created to fight segregation and its impact.
A statement from IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said private schools that promote discriminatory practices will no longer be exempt from taxes.
“Today’s proposed regulations put institutions on notice and schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination should expect to lose that status,” he said.
Nonprofit status long has been seen by both parties as something there should “be a really high bar to mess with,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow who studies higher education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
A decade ago, religious leaders raised concerns that Christian schools and colleges would lose accreditation or tax-exempt status over their codes of conduct barring same-sex relationships. What happens next will likely determine how the left responds, Cooper said.
“If the Trump administration were to use this regulation to start revoking tax-exempt status from colleges right and left, I think that would represent a really serious escalation and would be potentially something the Democrats would want to retaliate against when they return to power,” he said, adding that if the regulation is merely a warning to schools, “that’s a different conversation.”
Associated Press Education Writers Annie Ma and Heather Hollingsworth contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
FILE - People take photos near a John Harvard statue, left, on the Harvard University campus, Jan. 2, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
