Three Stars and Stripes journalists fired by the Pentagon last week have sued the Department of Defense, seeking to block their terminations.
Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin, Middle East reporter Lara Korte, and publisher Max Lederer filed the 45-page lawsuit Thursday in Washington. Among the defendants named were the Defense Department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and two of the department’s public affairs officials, according to their now former employer.
The suit asks the court to halt the terminations as unlawful, arguing they amounted to retaliation over unflattering coverage of a Navy deployment as part of a broader attempt to censor the press. The three plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers for Good Government, Government Accountability Project and the Yale School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic
“Our goal is to protect the rights of service members and their families to a free and independent press,” the three journalists said in a joint statement provided to Military.com. “This lawsuit is about safeguarding that mission and ensuring our civilian and military journalists can do their jobs without retaliation.”
The three were issued separation notices last Friday, each charged with insubordination. Stars and Stripes is owned by the Defense Department and its employees are federal workers, but the paper operates as an editorially independent news organization. It has been in continuous circulation since World War II.
Military.com asked the Defense Department whether it intends to contest the lawsuit and about the status of the employees’ appeals. No response was received by press time.
The Firings
Separation notices for Slavin and Korte cited a CBS News interview in which each defended the First Amendment principles behind their work and said censorship of news for service members would be a red line.
Slavin joined the publication in 2005 and became its top editor in September 2025. Korte began reporting for the paper in 2024.
Lederer, who spent 30 years with Stars and Stripes and had announced his retirement days before the firings, was terminated because he refused a request from Pentagon leadership to fire Slavin and Korte, according to the lawsuit.
He was also cited for insubordination over comments he made in his resignation.
Attorneys for Slavin and Korte claim they are being fired merely for saying on the CBS Sunday Morning TV show that Stars and Stripes should remain independent of Pentagon and political influence.
“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, in a statement provided to Military.com. “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.”
Lederer had said he was stepping down because his understanding of the mission of Stars and Stripes differed in “fundamental ways” from the direction the Defense Department had set for the paper. He was scheduled to leave Sept. 30.
A Warning Over the USS Abraham Lincoln
The firings are tied directly to the newspaper’s reporting, per the complaint.
The demand that Lederer fire Slavin and Korte came the day after Stars and Stripes published an article on deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, according to the suit.
That news coverage described an aircraft carrier that had been deployed for a historic 270 days without a port call, as part of the ongoing war with Iran that will mark the six-month mark of the conflict on Friday.
“These retaliatory firings at Stars and Stripes are precisely why these First Amendment protections matter,” Amy Powell, litigation director, Lawyers for Good Government, said in a statement shared with Military.com. “The government cannot preserve an independent press while punishing the people who insist that its independence is paramount to a functioning democracy.
“We are proud to stand with these employees in defending their rights and the principle that government officials cannot use their power over federal workers to silence protected speech.”
The dispute over the paper’s independence predates the firings. In March, the Pentagon outlined an overhaul of Stars and Stripes that barred it from using some newswire services and running comics and other syndicated features.
They required that its content be consistent with “good order and discipline,” a phrase drawn from the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Its ombudsman, whose role Congress created to protect its editorial independence, was fired in April.
This week’s lawsuit is separate from a suit filed in June by two members of the paper’s advisory board, who alleged the Pentagon’s overhaul violated federal law. That case remains pending.
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