Fired Stars and Stripes staffers file lawsuit against Pentagon, Hegseth

The Pentagon’s firing last week of three employees of the newspaper Stars and Stripes was done out of retaliation over unflattering coverage of a Navy deployment and in violation of the protected right to free speech, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Washington.

Erik Slavin, the editor in chief; Lara Korte, the paper’s Middle East reporter; and Max D. Lederer Jr., the publisher, filed the 45-page lawsuit against chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, the Defense Department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and another public affairs official, Andrew Brey.

It asks the court to halt their terminations as unlawful and seeks an immediate restraining order.

“Our goal is to protect the rights of service members and their families to a free and independent press,” the three said in a statement. “Stars and Stripes has served them for generations, and that independence is essential to keeping military communities fully and accurately informed. This lawsuit is about safeguarding that mission and ensuring our civilian and military journalists can do their jobs without retaliation.”

The Pentagon declined a request for comment.

The legal team representing the journalists is the same that represents employees of Voice of America, another government-owned news outlet that the Trump Administration has attempted to shut down. Both have mandates to give propaganda-free news, said David Seide, an attorney on the case with the Government Accountability Project.

Voice of America employees have two lawsuits ongoing against the government — one regarding their employment and the other about violations to its First Amendment protections.

“Enough is enough,” Seide said in a statement about the Stripes lawsuit. “It’s a sad day when independent journalists are punished just for saying they are not tools to promote government propaganda. Our lawsuit seeks to right that wrong.”

Slavin, Korte and Lederer received notice last Friday charging insubordination. Stars and Stripes is an independent newspaper owned by the Defense Department. Its employees are federal workers but operate the paper as a commercial news organization.

Paperwork for Slavin and Korte cited a CBS News interview that was broadcast in July. Each discussed the First Amendment principles that guided their work at the newspaper, which has been in continuous circulation since World War II.

After the CBS interview, the Pentagon’s concerns shifted from the substance of Stars and Stripes reporting to the loyalty of its leadership. A July performance review written by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell accused senior staff of “open rebellion” and said, “the most important element of the performance plan is the faithful administration of POTUS (President Donald Trump) policies.” The lawsuit cites this language as evidence that political compliance was being demanded from an independent newsroom.

Slavin began at Stripes in 2005 as a reporter and was named its top editor in September 2025. Korte began reporting for Stripes in 2024.

Lederer, who spent 30 years with the paper, had announced his retirement days earlier. He was fired because he had refused a request from his leadership to fire Korte and Slavin, according to the lawsuit. He was also cited for insubordination for personal comments he made in his resignation.

Lederer said he decided to step down because it had become clear that his philosophy of leadership and “understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes” differed in “fundamental ways” from plans the Defense Department has for the organization.

The demand on Lederer to fire Slavin and Korte came Aug. 12, the day after Stripes published an article about deteriorating conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier deployed without making a port call for more than 250 consecutive days at sea as part of an ongoing war with Iran. It was reported by Alison Bath.

Lederer on Aug. 17 followed up with Brey in email about the request to get clarification. The interviews had broadcast more than five weeks prior. Brey replied the same day without addressing Lederer’s concerns, “Thank you Max. I appreciate your response. However, please deliver the notices as instructed.”

He did not. Instead, he chose to retire.

“Mr. Lederer took this step because he did not want to be part of Defendants’ scheme to illegally punish Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte for exercising their First Amendment rights,” according to the lawsuit.

The Pentagon in March outlined an overhaul effort for Stars and Stripes that barred it from using some news wire services and running comics and other syndicated features.

It also stated that content must be consistent with “good order and discipline,” a phrase borrowed from the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In April, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, the publication’s ombudsman, a role charged by Congress with safeguarding the newspaper’s editorial independence.

Parnell and Brey in June began to reprimand Lederer for failing to implement the memo, despite a number of changes already underway at the publication, according to the lawsuit. They said he was “losing control” and “failing to discipline staffers who had been discussing policy changes with the media.”

Following the CBS broadcast, Parnell questioned Lederer on his thoughts about it, and the publisher responded that the two journalists had remained factual.

In his performance review later that month, Parnell said Lederer had let the Stripes leadership team go “into open rebellion against the new policy,” according to the lawsuit.

All three plan to file notices to appeal their firings, as outlined in the separation paperwork they received Friday.

“The Pentagon is trying to punish journalists for defending the established mission of Stars and Stripes,” said Taryn Wilgus Null, senior counsel at Democracy Defenders Fund. “We are asking the court to stop these unconstitutional terminations. Service members and their families need reporting that is independent of the officials it covers and is unafraid to criticize them when they deserve it.”