Democratic US senator Mark Kelly filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to nullify the “chilling” attempt by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to reduce the military veteran’s rank and pension as punishment for speaking out against the Trump administration.
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Hegseth had previously issued a formal censure to Kelly, a decorated retired navy captain and Nasa astronaut, for alleged “seditious statements” he made urging service members to resist unlawful orders. It began a process that could lead to Kelly, a senator for Arizona since 2021, being demoted and having his pension cut.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington DC federal court, argues that comments made by Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers – all military or intelligence veterans – in a short video to service members in November were protected free speech.
The 46-page court filing accuses Hegseth, the Department of Defense, the US navy, and John Phelan, the navy secretary, of “trampling” on constitutional protections “essential to legislative independence”. The filing said the defense secretary was attempting to dismantle the “bedrock principles of our democracy”, freedom of speech and the separation of powers.
“His unconstitutional crusade against me sends a chilling message to every retired member of the military: if you speak out and say something that the president or secretary of defense doesn’t like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted,” Kelly said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
“Hegseth wants our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and pay years or even decades after they leave the military just because he or another secretary of defense doesn’t like what they’ve said. That’s not the way things work in the United States of America, and I won’t stand for it.”
In the video by Kelly and his colleagues, Senator Elissa Slotkin and House members Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, Slotkin acknowledged that military personnel were “under enormous stress and pressure right now” because of the Trump administration’s policies.
Kelly’s lawsuit cites Donald Trump, who criticized Kelly and the other Democrats in a Truth Social post in November. The US president said the lawmakers were guilty of “seditious behavior punishable by death” for pointing out to service members they could refuse illegal orders.
The filing says Trump “publicly accused … Kelly of sedition and treason and demanded punishment. The secretary himself has echoed those accusations, announced an investigation, and then issued a letter of censure that – not tentatively, but conclusively – determined that [the senator’s] speech met the very criteria that the department must consider when reducing retirement grade.
“The outcome of any subsequent ‘review’ of … Kelly’s grade, even assuming it could lawfully proceed, is foreordained.”
Kelly said he was “respectfully” asking the court to find the censure letter and all related actions taken by Hegseth and the Pentagon unlawful and unconstitutional. He also asked the court to vacate those actions “to preserve the status of a coequal Congress and an apolitical military”.
In his statement, he added: “There are few things as important as standing up for the rights of the very Americans who fought to defend our freedoms.”
There was no immediate response to the lawsuit from Hegseth, the White House or the Pentagon.
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