UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
ADAM PUTNAM, et al.,
Plaintiffs, v. Civil Action No. 25-1272 (JEB)
CENTERRA GROUP, LLC, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
A security job is not the same as job security. Plaintiffs Nathan Matthews and Matthew
LaRock found that out last year. The two men previously worked as guards for Defendant
Centerra Group, LLC, where they were contracted out to positions at the Department of Energy.
In 2024, both took family and medical leave. When Matthews and LaRock returned to work,
however, they discovered that their security clearances — required for their DOE positions —
had been revoked and their jobs terminated. Two coworkers and union officers, Plaintiffs Adam
Putnam and Mary Philippe, helped grieve their terminations but ended up losing their own
security clearances and DOE positions in the process. The four fired employees then brought
this lawsuit against Centerra, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and two supervisors at DOE —
William Riddle and Kurt Runge — alleging violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act and
the D.C. Family and Medical Leave Act. Both Government Defendants and Centerra have now
filed Motions to Dismiss. The Court will grant the Government’s Motion in part and deny it in
part and will deny Centerra’s Motion in full.
1 I. Background
As is required at this juncture, the Court treats the Complaint’s factual allegations as true
for the purpose of evaluating Defendants’ Motions. Centerra provides security services to
various federal agencies, including DOE. See ECF No. 20 (Am. Compl.), ¶ 8. At the start of
2024, Matthews, LaRock, Philippe, and Putnam were all working as Security Police Officers on
Centerra’s DOE contract, and DOE and Centerra served as their joint employers. Id., ¶¶ 4–7. In
addition, Matthews and LaRock were members of the security-guard union that bargained with
Centerra, while Putnam and Philippe served as Union President and Treasurer, respectively. Id.,
¶¶ 12, 15–16.
In August 2024, LaRock and Matthews requested time off under the FMLA and
DCFMLA — LaRock for the impending birth of his child and Matthews for recovery from
elbow surgery. Id., ¶¶ 13–14. Their requests for leave were approved with little fuss. Id. Yet,
when the two tried to return to work in December, they were informed that their security
clearances had been revoked by Riddle, DOE’s Facility Security Manager, and Runge, DOE’s
Director of Headquarters Security Operations, rendering them ineligible to continue working at
the agency. Id., ¶¶ 10–11, 13–14, 17. They were then fired. Id., ¶¶ 13–14. Putnam and
Philippe, acting as Union officers, opposed their terminations and filed grievances on Matthews
and LaRock’s behalf. Id., ¶¶ 15–16. What began as a tale of two terminations then took a turn
for the worse: shortly after filing the grievances, Putnam and Philippe lost their security
clearances and their jobs as well. Id., ¶¶ 19–20.
The Union, acting on Matthews, LaRock, and Putnam’s behalf, sued to compel
arbitration of several issues related to their terminations. Int’l Guards Union of Am. Loc. 150 v.
Centerra Grp., LLC, No. 25-583 (D.D.C. 2025). The Court, which is also presiding over that
2 matter, has since sent a subset of those issues to arbitration. Int’l Guards, No. 25-583, ECF No.
22 (Mem. Op.) (D.D.C. Feb. 10, 2026). In addition, the four former employees filed this lawsuit
against Centerra, Secretary Wright, Riddle, and Runge, alleging a constellation of
FMLA/DCFMLA violations and seeking declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief. See Am.
Compl., ¶¶ 35–163. The counts break down into two main categories: Matthews and LaRock
bring claims against Defendants for interfering with their right to take family and medical leave,
and Putnam and Philippe assert claims against Defendants for retaliating after they engaged in
protected activity (opposing purportedly unlawful actions against another employee). Centerra
and the Government Defendants have now separately moved to dismiss. See ECF Nos. 22
(Centerra MTD); 23 (Gov. MTD). Plaintiffs oppose both Motions in separate Oppositions. See
ECF Nos. 24 (Pl. Opp. to Centerra); 26 (Pl. Opp. to Gov.).
II. Legal Standard
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), a court must dismiss a claim for relief
when it “lack[s] . . . subject-matter jurisdiction.” In evaluating a Rule 12(b)(1) motion, courts
are instructed to “treat the complaint’s factual allegations as true and afford the plaintiff the
benefit of all inferences that can be derived from the facts alleged.” Han v. Lynch, 223 F. Supp.
3d 95, 103 (D.D.C. 2016) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because federal courts are courts
of limited jurisdiction, a plaintiff who seeks to invoke the court’s powers bears the burden of
proving that it has subject-matter jurisdiction to hear his claims. Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504
U.S. 555, 561 (1992); U.S. Ecology, Inc. v. Dep’t of Interior, 231 F.3d 20, 24 (D.C. Cir. 2000).
“Sovereign immunity is jurisdictional in nature,” FDIC v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 475 (1994), so
claims barred by the Government’s sovereign immunity are “subject to dismissal under Rule
12(b)(1).” Clayton v. District of Columbia, 931 F. Supp. 2d 192, 200 (D.D.C. 2013).
3 Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), conversely, a court must dismiss an
action when the complaint “fail[s] to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.” As with a
12(b)(1) motion, a court assessing a 12(b)(6) motion must “treat the complaint’s factual
allegations as true and must grant plaintiff the benefit of all inferences that can be derived from
the facts alleged.” Sparrow v. United Air Lines, Inc., 216 F.3d 1111, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 2000)
(citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678
(2009). A court need not accept as true, however, “a legal conclusion couched as a factual
allegation,” nor an inference unsupported by the facts set forth in the complaint. Trudeau v.
FTC, 456 F.3d 178, 193 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (quoting Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 286 (1986)).
Although “detailed factual allegations” are not necessary to withstand a Rule 12(b)(6) motion,
Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007), “a complaint must contain sufficient
factual matter, [if] accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Iqbal,
556 U.S. at 678 (internal quotation marks omitted). Courts reviewing Rule 12(b)(6) motions are
limited to the pleadings and “may only consider the facts alleged in the complaint, any
documents attached as exhibits thereto, and matters subject to judicial notice.” Kursar v. Transp.
Sec. Admin., 581 F. Supp. 2d 7, 14 (D.D.C. 2008).
III. Analysis
Government Defendants put forth three arguments in support of their Motion to Dismiss:
Plaintiffs’ DCFMLA claims should be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, their
FMLA claims should be dismissed for the same reason, and even if there is jurisdiction, the
Supreme Court’s decision in Department of the Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518 (1988), precludes
any claim for relief. See Gov. MTD at 1–2. Centerra’s Motion advances just the Egan
argument, contending that the judicial deference afforded to executive security-clearance
4 decisions means that Plaintiffs have failed to state any claims against the Company. See
Centerra MTD at 2–3. The Court will consider each argument in turn.
A. DCFMLA Claims
As to the DCFMLA counts, the Government contends that the Court lacks subject-matter
jurisdiction because that Act did not abrogate its sovereign immunity. See Gov. MTD at 7–10.
Plaintiffs have since acquiesced to tossing these claims, see Pl. Opp. to Gov. at 16 n.1, so the
Court will dismiss all DCFMLA counts against the Government Defendants.
B. FMLA Claims
The Government next maintains that Plaintiffs have brought their FMLA claims against
the wrong defendants and that the Court therefore lacks jurisdiction over the case. See Gov.
MTD at 10–11. In the Complaint, Plaintiffs name Secretary Wright, Riddle, and Runge as
Government Defendants, notably omitting DOE itself. See Am. Compl., ¶¶ 9–11. The parties
dispute whether the claims against Riddle and Runge are in their official or personal capacities,
but they appear generally aligned that those counts name Secretary Wright in his official
capacity. See ECF No. 28 (Gov. Reply) at 4–5; Pl. Opp. to Gov. at 16.
Seizing on DOE’s omission from the Complaint, the Government argues that the FMLA
authorizes suit against only a “public agency,” so individual officials cannot be sued at all, and
all three Government Defendants must be dismissed from the case. See Gov. MTD at 10–11.
This argument misunderstands the import of an official-capacity suit. It is well settled that “an
official-capacity suit is, in all respects other than name, to be treated as a suit against the entity,”
so “long as the government entity receives notice and an opportunity to respond.” Kentucky v.
Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 166 (1985); see also Monell v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S.
658, 690 n.55 (1978) (finding official-capacity suits “generally represent only another way of
5 pleading an action against an entity of which an officer is an agent”); Cnty. Bd. v. U.S. Dep’t of
Transp., 705 F. Supp. 2d 25, 28 (D.D.C. 2010) (“[A]n official-capacity suit is a way of pleading
an action against the agency which the official heads.”). The suit against Secretary Wright in his
official capacity thus functions as a suit against DOE. Coulibaly v. Kerry, 130 F. Supp. 3d 140,
148–49 (D.D.C. 2015) (accepting FMLA suit against Secretary of State in official capacity as
equivalent to suit against Government).
To the extent the Government protests that it lacked notice that this suit sought to hold
DOE liable, the Court disagrees: the Attorney General was served when Secretary Wright was
named as a Defendant, see ECF No. 9 (U.S. Att’y Gen. Serv.), and the Complaint makes
numerous mentions of DOE’s liability. See Am. Compl., ¶¶ 13–15 (describing “Defendant
DOE” in various factual allegations), 25 (arguing that “DOE failed to follow its own rules and
regulations”). For these reasons, the Court will permit the suit against Secretary Wright in his
official capacity to proceed with the understanding that, as in all official-capacity suits, any
judgment would be binding on DOE.
Plaintiffs’ claims against Riddle and Runge pose a trickier set of issues. The Complaint
never specifies whether the suit is brought against them in their official or individual capacities.
The parties also fiercely debate whether the FMLA even authorizes suits against public officials
in their individual capacity, a question of statutory interpretation that has split the appellate
courts and that remains open in this Circuit. See Gov. MTD at 12–14; Pl. Opp. to Gov. at 18–27;
Austin v. Washington Metro. Area Transit Auth., 2020 WL 2962609, at *13 (D.D.C. May 28,
2020) (summarizing circuit split on FMLA employer definition).
The Court need not reach the statutory question, however, because it finds that Plaintiffs’
claims were brought against Riddle and Runge in their official capacities. Although Plaintiffs
6 argue the contrary in their Opposition, that assertion is not binding on this Court. Daskalea v.
District of Columbia, 227 F.3d 433, 447–48 (D.C. Cir. 2000). Instead, when a complaint is silent
as to whether a suit is brought against a party in his personal or official capacity, the D.C. Circuit
employs a course-of-proceedings test to ask what the totality of circumstances suggests and what
kind of potential liability a defendant would have been given fair notice of. Id. at 448.
Here, the evidence indicates an official-capacity suit. To start, nowhere in the Complaint
do Plaintiffs specify that their claims are brought against the supervisors in their individual
capacities. Other circuits treat such an omission as dispositive. Soper ex rel. Soper v. Hoben,
195 F.3d 845, 853 (6th Cir. 1999) (“Generally, plaintiffs must designate in which capacity they
are suing defendants; if not, by operation of law, defendants are deemed sued in their official
capacities.”). Delving further into the Complaint does little to aid Plaintiffs. In the prayer for
relief, the employees requested a declaratory judgment on the unlawfulness of the Defendants’
“employment policies, practices, procedures, conditions[,] and customs,” and injunctions
directing “Defendants to reinstate” Plaintiffs and their benefits — remedies that can be secured
only from DOE, not Riddle and Runge personally. See Am. Compl. at 31–32. Plaintiffs point to
their request for punitive damages as an indication that Riddle and Runge have been sued in their
individual capacities, see Pl. Opp. to Gov. at 18, but the FMLA does not permit the awarding of
punitive damages to begin with. See 29 U.S.C. § 2617(a)(1)(A); Shatteen v. Omni Hotels Mgmt.
Corp., 113 F. Supp. 3d 176, 182 (D.D.C. 2015) (“Because the FMLA only affords relief for
compensatory damages, punitive damages are unavailable irrespective of the forum.”). For these
reasons, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs sued the DOE supervisors in their official capacities.
Because suit against Riddle and Runge is redundant with suit against Wright — all three
amount to a suit against DOE — the Court will dismiss all claims against those men for
7 efficiency purposes. Placide Ayissi-Etoh v. Fannie Mae, 49 F. Supp. 3d 9, 14 (D.D.C. 2014)
(dismissing redundant official-capacity claims when government entity was already named as
defendant). It will permit the counts against Secretary Wright in his official capacity —
essentially claims against DOE — to proceed.
C. Review of Security-Clearance Decisions Under Egan
Finally, both the Government and Centerra assert that the claims against them are barred
by the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of the Navy v. Egan. In Egan, a civilian Navy
employee lost his security clearance and was consequently removed from his position at a
nuclear-submarine maintenance facility. See 484 U.S. at 521–22. He appealed the clearance
revocation to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which held that it had no authority to review
“a security-clearance determination underlying a removal.” Id. at 525. On appeal, the Supreme
Court agreed and held that the merits of the security-clearance denial, “a sensitive and inherently
discretionary judgment call, [are] committed by law to the appropriate agency of the Executive
Branch.” Id. at 527. For that reason, the MSPB could not review the revocation decision. In the
years since, courts have interpreted Egan to stand for the proposition that security-clearance
decisions cannot be subject to judicial review either. E.g., Lee v. Garland, 120 F.4th 880, 888
(D.C. Cir. 2024); Bennett v. Chertoff, 425 F.3d 999, 1001 (D.C. Cir. 2005); Dorfmont v. Brown,
913 F.2d 1399, 1401 (9th Cir. 1990); Makky v. Chertoff, 541 F.3d 205, 212 (3d Cir. 2008).
While Egan’s bar on judicial review may sound like a jurisdictional limitation, the D.C. Circuit
has clarified that dismissals under Egan should be considered dismissals for failure to state a
claim, not for want of jurisdiction. Oryszak v. Sullivan, 576 F.3d 522, 526 (D.C. Cir. 2009).
The Court will accordingly evaluate Defendants’ Motions under a Rule 12(b)(6) standard.
8 Department of Energy
Since the Court has now dismissed the claims against Riddle and Runge, it will consider
the Government’s contentions only as to DOE. The Government argues that under Egan, the
Court cannot review the merits of its decisions to revoke Plaintiffs’ security clearances. See
Gov. MTD at 14–19. True — but Plaintiffs are not asking for such review. Instead, their
Complaint asserts that DOE failed to follow its own regulations and procedures in ways that
violated the FMLA, and that those procedural anomalies merit this Court’s intervention. See
Am. Compl., ¶¶ 21–34. For example, Plaintiffs allege that DOE regulations required the
Government to obtain their signatures before terminating their employment, to initiate an
administrative review process that would have allowed them to contest their clearance
withdrawals, and to channel revocations through specified processes, all of which DOE bypassed
to unlawfully fire them in contravention of the FMLA. See Pl. Opp. to Gov. at 29–31.
Appellate courts across the country have regularly interpreted Egan to permit review of
whether an agency followed its own regulations and procedures, even when those regulations
deal with security-clearance revocations. Stehney v. Perry, 101 F.3d 925, 932 (3d Cir. 1996)
(finding jurisdiction to review whether agency followed own clearance-revocation procedures
despite Egan); Jamil v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Def., 910 F.2d 1203, 1208 (4th Cir. 1990) (same); Duane
v. U.S. Dep’t of Def., 275 F.3d 988, 993 (10th Cir. 2002) (same). After all, while whether to
revoke a security clearance is a discretionary judgment call, whether to follow required
procedures is not. And those procedures are separate from the merits of the revocation.
Similarly, the D.C. Circuit — albeit in a decision prior to Egan — has held that agencies may be
subject to suit for failing to follow their own regulations. Doe v. Casey, 796 F.2d 1508, 1519
(D.C. Cir. 1986), aff’d in part, rev’d in part sub nom. Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592 (1988). The
9 fact that courts may not review clearance revocations is not intended to keep employees from
vindicating “all other employment rights and benefits.” Adams v. Dep’t of Def., 688 F.3d 1330,
1334 (Fed. Cir. 2012). In line with that sensible rule and given that Plaintiffs are not asking for
review of DOE’s revocation decisions, the Court will permit Plaintiffs’ FMLA counts against the
Government to proceed.
Centerra
Centerra’s Motion similarly argues that Egan bars all of Plaintiffs’ DCFMLA and FMLA
claims against it. See Centerra MTD at 8–10. Like the Government, the Company stretches
Egan beyond its limits.
Egan carves out an area of executive discretion — security-clearance decisions — in
which courts must defer. The case, however, does not insist that “all decisions that might bear
upon an employee’s eligibility to access classified information” are likewise unreviewable.
Rattigan v. Holder, 689 F.3d 764, 767 (D.C. Cir. 2012). This is especially true for claims alleged
“against private employers, because such defendants are rarely responsible for (or even
substantially involved in) the government’s security clearance decisions.” Zeinali v. Raytheon
Co., 636 F.3d 544, 550 (9th Cir. 2011).
Centerra’s Motion attempts to recast the legal landscape, arguing that while courts have
permitted some Title VII discrimination claims to proceed even when a security-clearance
determination is involved, those cases represent special Title VII exceptions to Egan, and there is
no existing exception for FMLA/DCFMLA claims. See Centerra MTD at 10–11. This argument
misses the point: Egan’s applicability does not depend on the statutory basis of a plaintiff’s
claim. It depends instead on what precise employer conduct a plaintiff asks a court to examine
and whether that conduct is “severable” from the clearance determination. Sanchez v. U.S.
10 Dep’t of Energy, 870 F.3d 1185, 1196 (10th Cir. 2017). Here, the Court finds that it may
evaluate Centerra’s conduct without reviewing DOE’s clearance-revocation decisions.
In their Complaint, Plaintiffs alleged that Centerra interfered with LaRock and
Matthews’s rights to take family and medical leave and that it retaliated against all four Plaintiffs
for engaging in conduct protected by the FMLA and DCFMLA — either taking leave, as LaRock
and Matthews did, or protesting the violation of another employee’s FMLA rights, as Philippe
and Putnam did. See Am. Compl., ¶¶ 44–49, 71–77, 150–52. While the Court may not review
DOE’s security-clearance revocations, it is certainly empowered to review Centerra’s conduct
leading up to and following the revocations to determine whether that conduct violated the
statutes.
Starting with pre-revocation conduct, the D.C. Circuit has explained that Egan shields
from judicial review the specific judgments to grant or deny security access made by those with
“the necessary expertise in protecting classified information,” but not any and all decisions
leading up to a clearance revocation. Rattigan, 689 F.3d at 767 (quoting Egan, 484 U.S. at 529).
For example, in Rattigan, an FBI employee was subject to a security-clearance investigation after
a coworker reported concerns about his conduct and a supervisor forwarded those concerns to the
security office. Id. at 766. The D.C. Circuit held that Egan did not bar review of the
supervisor’s decision to report security concerns, even if the report led to the security-clearance
investigation and ultimate decision, which was unreviewable. Id. at 767–68. Likewise, here, if
Centerra’s actions and decisions caused Plaintiffs to lose their security clearances, that conduct is
not shielded from judicial review under Egan because it is not the kind of discretionary
decisionmaking by a security expert that Egan sought to protect. The Court can therefore
11 consider Plaintiffs’ claims of retaliation and interference without reviewing the merits of the
clearance revocations.
In addition, the FMLA and DCFMLA impose a duty on employers to reinstate employees
following their return from family and medical leave. See 29 U.S.C. § 2614(a)(1)(A); D.C. Code
§ 32-505(d)(1). Alternatively — say, for example, an employee’s original position is no longer
available — the employer is obligated to place him into “an equivalent position.” 29 U.S.C.
§ 2614(a)(1)(B); see also D.C. Code § 32-505(d)(2). Plaintiffs allege that rather than doing this,
Centerra simply fired them after their DOE positions were terminated. See Am. Compl, ¶¶ 13–
14. Even if Plaintiffs could no longer work in their DOE positions following the revocations of
their security clearances, those revocations have no bearing on whether Centerra was obligated to
find Matthews and LaRock alternate positions and whether it satisfactorily did so.
In 2017, the Tenth Circuit addressed a Rehabilitation Act case where a government
employee had his DOE security clearance revoked for a disability. Sanchez, 870 F.3d at 1195.
That Circuit held that although DOE’s decision to revoke the employee’s security clearance was
unreviewable per Egan, the later decisions “not to engage with him when he requested a [no-
clearance] job or to reassign him to a [no-clearance] job,” which it was obligated to do under the
Act, were reviewable. Id. at 1195–96. This is because that court found that review of that later
conduct did not require it to examine DOE’s security-clearance decision. Id. at 1196. Likewise,
this Court concludes here that it may review whether Centerra’s post-revocation conduct passed
statutory muster.
In sum, Egan poses no bar when a claim is “merely connected to the government’s
security clearance decision”; otherwise, it would “essentially immunize government contractors
12 from any liability in cases involving employees whose security clearances are revoked or
denied.” Zeinali, 636 F.3d at 550. Plaintiffs thus may proceed against Centerra.
IV. Conclusion
The Court, accordingly, will grant the Government’s Motion to Dismiss in part and deny
it in part. It will deny Centerra’s Motion to Dismiss in full. An Order so stating will issue this
day.
/s/ James E. Boasberg JAMES E. BOASBERG Chief Judge Date: February 25, 2026