A former congressional staffer has filed a lawsuit against Texas Republican U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, claiming he was forced to quit his position due to a “hostile work environment.”

Alex Chadwell, who is gay and began working for Nehls in January 2021, accused the representative, his chief of staff, and special adviser of regularly making homophobic comments such as “gays go to hell” or “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." He said that the chief of staff even once told him “not to engage with gay constituents."

Chadwell claimed that Nehls's special adviser kept an anti-LGBTQ+ poster in his office specifically to mock him and would often point at it in his presence, saying things like “We don’t need to let gays into military" or “We don’t need to support the queers."