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
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 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.
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“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.