For Immediate Release
Contact: Scott Cullen
December 15, 2025
(516) 819-4886
STAR FOUNDATION JOINS LEGAL ACTION TO SUPPORT FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY WORKERS
Friend of the court brief filed in Carson et al v. Department of Energy.
[New York, NY] Standing for Truth about Radiation (STAR) will join a number of engineering professional societies and other Department of Energy (DOE) community activist organizations and become a party to the friend of the court brief (amicus curiae) in the first amendment, freedom of speech, federal lawsuit of Joseph P. Carson, P.E., NSPE. Mr. Carson is a licensed professional engineer (P.E.) and safety engineer in DOE who has prevailed as a "whistleblower" in administrative forums an unbelievable seven-times in the past six and a half years.
A number of Mr. Carson's safety concerns involved safety at the now-shuttered High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. "DOE and its contractors' safety professionals have been too unaccountable for workplace and public safety and health in DOE for far too long," said Scott Cullen, Counsel for STAR. "Mr. Carson, as a P.E., was ethically and legally obligated to inform impacted parties about unsafe conditions at the HFBR when DOE suppressed them. As an organization, STAR agrees that federal employees need the freedom of speech to voice safety concerns, without retribution, when they are professionally obligated to voice them."
"If more DOE `safety professionals' put their professional duty ahead of their economic self-interest, as Mr. Carson has, we wouldn't be at risk from all the environment, safety and health issues we face at BNL and other DOE facilities around the country," stated Alice Slater, Board member of STAR and President of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment. "STAR calls for other engineering professional societies and DOE stakeholder groups to join the friend of the court brief. DOE safety professionals need to know that if they risk their jobs and careers for the safety of others, they won't be alone. They also need to know that if they are incompetent or negligent, organizations like STAR want them held professionally accountable," concluded Slater.
Article reprinted from the STAR Foundation website: www.noradiation.org
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