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Wrongly terminated Chinese-American scientist Sherry Chen settles cases for nearly US$2 million
- The settlement for Sherry Chen, formerly a National Weather Service hydrologist, ends a decade-long odyssey that began when she was charged with spying for Beijing
- “The Commerce Department is finally being held responsible for its wrongdoing and for the conduct of its illegal security unit,’ Chen says
Bochen Han in Washington
Published: 6:13am, 12 Nov, 2022
Sherry Chen, a National Weather Service hydrologist who was accused of spying for China, has settled her wrongful prosecution and termination cases with the US government. Photo: AFP
In the final chapter of a decade-long saga, lawyers for Sherry Chen, a Chinese-American scientist with the National Weather Service, announced a historic settlement on Thursday in two lawsuits against the US government for her wrongful prosecution and termination.
According to Chen’s lawyers, the settlement – US$550,000, and an additional US$1.25 million over 10 years – is one of the largest paid to an individual plaintiff in the history of the US Commerce Department, which oversees the weather service.
The US Department of Commerce in Washington. The Chen settlement was said to be among the largest paid to an individual in the department’s history. Photo: Shutterstock
“The government’s investigation and prosecution of me was discriminatory and unjustified,” Chen said in a statement on Thursday. “The Commerce Department is finally being held responsible for its wrongdoing and for the conduct of its illegal security unit, which has had a devastating impact on my life and the lives of so many other federal employees. No one else should have to endure this injustice.”
First brought in 2012, the Chen case was an early instance of what would become a broader pattern of the government’s increasing suspicion and targeting of ethnic Chinese scientists amid growing US-China competition.
Criminal charges were filed against Chen, a hydrologist, after the Commerce Department accused her of passing information about US dams to a Chinese official. Chen was arrested and indicted on counts of unauthorised access to a federal database and lying to federal agents.
“The government’s unfounded allegations rested on Ms. Chen’s use of a shared, office-wide password to access a database relevant to her work,” read a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union, co-counsel on a civil lawsuit that Chen filed against both the Justice and Commerce departments in 2019.
In 2015, the government dropped its charges against Chen after more than 20 members of Congress demanded an investigation into racial profiling of federal employees. But Chen was still terminated from her job in March 2016, after being first placed on indefinite leave in 2014.
After the Merit Systems Protection Board – an agency that hears claims from federal employees – found that her termination was unlawful in 2018, the Commerce Department appealed and placed her again on indefinite leave.
Chen sought US$5 million in damages in her 2019 civil suit. Her lawyers filed an additional complaint in 2021 adding new accusations, after the Commerce Department unit that investigated her case was disbanded.
A Senate committee report that year detailed how the unit – known as the Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) – had become a “rogue, unaccountable police force” that operated outside the law and “opened frivolous investigations on a variety of employees without evidence suggesting wrongdoing”.
The investigation into Chen predated the Justice Department’s “China Initiative” – a programme initiated in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump ostensibly focused on countering economic espionage but which MIT Tech Review found disproportionately targeted those of Chinese descent – which saw a higher number of cases fall apart before trial than the federal average.
The China Initiative programme was discontinued this year, with Justice Department officials saying they would pivot to a “broader approach” to combat threats from China, Russia, North Korea, and other countries.
In addition to the payments, Chen’s lawyers said, the Commerce Department will also provide her a letter acknowledging her extensive government service and host a meeting with officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency for the NWS, where Chen plans to discuss the agency’s wrongdoing and the importance of anti-discrimination reforms.
The settlement also marks the end of Chen’s wrongful termination case pending before the Merit Systems Protection Board.
“Today, a great blow was struck against bigotry and for the rights of Asian-Americans,” Michele Young, one of Chen’s lawyers, said, “as the government was forced to reckon with and be held accountable for the devastating damage to an award-winning scientist’s life”.
Chen’s case brought together a network of concerned Asian-Americans, which later mobilised to advocate for individuals charged under the China Initiative.
One of the earliest actions taken by Joe Biden as US president in 2021 was to issue a memorandum denouncing anti-Asian racism and providing guidance to the Justice Department on how to process hate crime reports, amid a wave of discrimination against the Asian-American community during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Scrutiny of ethnic Chinese scientists has had a chilling effect. A poll last year by researchers at the University of Arizona and the Committee of 100, a non-partisan organisation of prominent Chinese-Americans, surveyed 184 Chinese national scientists and found that over 40 per cent of them considered leaving the US due to Justice Department investigations.
A study conducted from December 2021 to March 2022 by the Asian-American Scholar Forum, an advocacy group, found that among 1,229 US-based Chinese scientists, 61 per cent expressed an intention to relocate. The same study found that 1,415 US-based Chinese scientists switched their affiliation from American to Chinese institutions in 2021, an almost 22 per cent jump from 2020, and more than three times the number compared with 2011.
Supporters of programmes like the China Initiative have said that China devotes substantial resources to intellectual property theft at home and abroad; that Beijing has laid out plans to dominate key technologies in its Made in China 2025 scheme; and that the more open US approach to science is highly vulnerable.
Last month, the Justice Department brought two other cases of economic espionage involving at least six alleged Chinese intelligence officers and affiliates.
Xi Xiaoxing, a physicist, at a news conference in 2015 with a photograph of Chen behind him. Photo: AFP
Other scientists are pursuing damages for abuses by the government. In September, Chinese-American physicist Xi Xiaoxing appeared in court seeking reinstatement of his lawsuit against an FBI agent who investigated him for a case that was ultimately dismissed before trial.
“America is harmed, not helped, when scientists of Chinese or Asian descent are falsely accused of wrongdoing without adequate evidence or protection,” said Zhengyu Huang, the Committee of 100 president.
“Even when acquitted, many lose their financial safety and careers – just like what Sherry Chen has experienced. We are extremely pleased for Sherry and her family for the vindication, but we know that there is still much work to be done in support of other scientists of Chinese or Asian descent that are being maligned.”
