Former MARAD Chief Counsel Seeks Emergency Injunction After Navy Orders Her Back Under Supervisor She Accused of Retaliation

One year after Maritime Legal Aid & Advocacy first reported on former Maritime Administration Chief Counsel Kathryn Denise Rucker Krepp’s lawsuit against the Secretary of the Navy, the dispute has entered a new and urgent phase.

Krepp has asked a federal judge to stop the Navy from ordering her back to the Naval History and Heritage Command under the direct supervision of a senior official she accuses of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.

In a motion filed July 28, 2026, Krepp says the Navy ordered her to report back to NHHC by August 3 and to work directly for retired Rear Admiral Samuel A. Cox, the command’s director and one of the officials named throughout her allegations. According to the motion, Cox would serve as her supervisor, rater, senior rater, and timecard keeper.

The original lawsuit ties the alleged retaliation directly to Krepp’s role in congressional investigations of Operation Fouled Anchor—the Coast Guard investigation that uncovered decades of mishandled and concealed sexual-assault allegations at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. According to her complaint, Krepp provided information to the Senate Commerce Committee, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and House oversight and transportation committees examining the scandal.

According to Krepp’s complaint, she alleges that NHHC leaders questioned her communications with Congress, accused her of improperly conducting that work on government time, excluded her from meetings, lowered her performance evaluation, and placed her on administrative leave. Krepp maintains that she communicated with congressional investigators on her personal time. Her new injunction motion again identifies her work with Congress and investigators examining Operation Fouled Anchor as part of the alleged retaliatory pattern.

Krepp has held the GS-15 position of Director of the Director’s Action Group, a senior leadership role responsible for briefings, decision papers, high-priority projects, and other work for Navy leadership. She has been detailed outside NHHC while her complaints and lawsuit remain pending.

According to her new filing, Cox told her that she would return as “Special Assistant to the Director NHHC for Special Projects.” Krepp argues that the assignment would strip her of supervisory authority, remove her from command-staff functions, isolate her from established department-head duties, and amount to a functional demotion.

The motion asks U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb to preserve Krepp’s current placement outside NHHC and prohibit the Navy from returning her to the supervision of the command while the litigation is pending. She also asks the court to require the Navy to continue assigning her work suitable to her rank and experience.

The emergency motion arrives while the Navy’s partial motion to dismiss remains pending. The Navy has asked the court to dismiss Krepp’s gender-discrimination, hostile-work-environment, and retaliation counts for failure to state a claim.

The Navy argues that Krepp’s proposed removal from federal service had a legitimate explanation unrelated to discrimination or retaliation. Its motion focuses on an email in which Krepp requested cancellation of a hiring announcement after receiving a finalist list containing only men. The Navy characterizes that request as an attempt to exclude qualified male candidates based on gender.

The Navy also argues that the conduct described in Krepp’s complaint does not amount to severe or pervasive harassment, that many alleged employment actions caused no legally cognizable harm, and that Krepp has not plausibly connected any adverse action to protected activity.

Krepp denies that the hiring dispute provides a legitimate basis for dismissing her lawsuit. Her opposition says the challenged hiring action followed an earlier announcement in which a male candidate had been selected but declined the position. She says she questioned why the replacement applicant pool had been narrowed and sought to widen it.

Her filing alleges a broader pattern of unequal treatment and retaliation, including denial of telework benefits available to male senior staff, exclusion from meetings within her portfolio, changes to her duties and performance standards, a lowered performance rating, alleged forgery of her signature on performance records, and hostility connected to her work with congressional investigators examining Operation Fouled Anchor.

Krepp also emphasizes the timing of the proposed removal: she alleges that it came six weeks after she amended an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint. Her opposition states that the deciding official ultimately declined to remove her because the evidence did not meet the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.

The Navy’s reply maintains that the hiring email remains an “obvious alternative explanation” for the proposed removal and argues that the timing of Krepp’s EEO activity, by itself, cannot make her retaliation claim plausible.

On July 27, one day before Krepp filed her injunction motion, the Navy submitted a new D.C. Circuit decision as supplemental authority.

In Spencer v. Collins, the appeals court affirmed dismissal of a federal employee’s retaliation claim despite what it called “very close” timing between protected activity and later discipline. The court concluded that the employee had not overcome an obvious alternative explanation for the employment action: alleged workplace misconduct.

The Navy argues that Spencer supports dismissal here because Krepp’s own complaint identifies the hiring dispute that it says led to the proposed removal. Krepp has not yet filed a response to the supplemental-authority notice on the current docket.

As of July 30, 2026, the Navy has not filed an opposition to Krepp’s motion for a preliminary injunction, and Judge Cobb has not ruled on either the injunction request or the pending partial motion to dismiss.

The allegations remain contested, and the court has not determined whether Krepp was subjected to unlawful discrimination or retaliation. The immediate question is narrower but consequential: whether the Navy may return her to NHHC and place her under Cox’s direct supervision while those claims remain unresolved.

MLAA will continue monitoring the docket and will update this report when the Navy responds or the court rules.