Kristi Noem Sued by a Transgender TSA Employee Due to Trump’s Executive Order
The TSA agent's attorney calls the discrimination she allegedly faced "very degrading, and it also is completely illegal.”
Updated Nov. 12 2025, 11:28 a.m. ET
The United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has had an interesting political run. Before accepting her role with the Trump Administration in January 2025, she served as the Governor of South Dakota, becoming the first female governor in the position. Since stepping into her Secretary role, Kristi has been involved in various scandals and, now, a massive lawsuit.
The lawsuit involves her being sued by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) worker who says her rights were taken away immediately following Trump coming into office. Here are the details of Kristi's TSA lawsuit.
Kristi Noem was sued by a TSA employee who says she was "involuntarily outed" as transgender due to Trump's executive order.
In November 2025, a transgender TSA officer named Danielle Mittereder filed a federal lawsuit against Kristi. According to The Independent, the filing names her as the lone defendant in the case. Mittereder claimed the reason for the lawsuit was due to how Trump's January 2025 executive order, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, had ruined her life and job.
Mittereder stated that the executive order has made it impossible for her to perform her required work tasks. She shared that she's unable to do one task in particular, which includes patting down the passenger. Mittereder said in November 2025 that she hadn't been able to pat anyone down over the last 10 months due to the executive order and a subsequent restriction from TSA that calls for, “prohibiting all transgender [officers] from conducting pat-downs.”
Before the restriction came into effect, Mittereder said she was a star TSA employee. She was praised for her work in the field, especially her pat-downs. Mittereder was also "praised her professionalism, skills, knowledge, and rapport with fellow officers and the public," which significantly changed once she was "involuntarily outed" by the EO.
“She’s good at her job, she wants to go to work and do her job every day,” Mittereder's attorney, Jonathan Puth told The Independent in a statement. "And she’s not allowed to do it, for the sole reason that she is transgender.”
Puth added that his client being pushed out of her job due to her gender is "very degrading, and it also is completely illegal.”
What has Kristi Noem said about her TSA lawsuit?
As of this writing, Kristi hasn't addressed Mittereder's lawsuit against her publicly. However, the Secretary has has expressed her full support for Trump’s EO and said DHS would “fully comply.” Additionally, as the governor of South Dakota, Kristi signed into law a bill that banned gender-affirming care for minors, a move that was slammed by advocacy groups as discriminatory and harmful to trans kids.
While Kristi is remaining tight-lipped about the case, Mittereder reportedly sees the case going in her favor. She is seeking a court order preventing the agency from enforcing the February directive. Mittereder is also demanding a jury trial, along with compensatory damages to be determined in court.