Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05163/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05163-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 13, 2009 Decided February 13, 2009 

No. 08-5163 

JOSEPH J. FILEBARK, II, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

v. 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND 

FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:03-cv-01685) 

George M. Chuzi argued the cause and filed the briefs 

for appellant. 

Beverly M. Russell, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellees. With her on the brief were Jeffrey A. 

Taylor, U.S. Attorney, R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. 

Attorney, and Elizabeth J. Head, Attorney, Federal Aviation 

Administration. 

Before: HENDERSON, TATEL, and GARLAND, Circuit 

Judges. 

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

 TATEL, Circuit Judge: We have long held that federal 

employees may not use the Administrative Procedure Act to 

challenge agency employment actions. See Fornaro v. James, 

416 F.3d 63, 66–67 (D.C. Cir. 2005); Graham v. Ashcroft, 

358 F.3d 931, 933–35 (D.C. Cir. 2004); Carducci v. Regan, 

714 F.2d 171, 172 (D.C. Cir. 1983). This is so because 

Congress, through the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Pub. 

L. No. 95-454, 92 Stat. 1111 (codified as amended in 

scattered sections of 5 U.S.C.), and related employment 

statutes, has carefully constructed a system for review and 

resolution of federal employment disputes, intentionally 

providing—and intentionally not providing—particular 

forums and procedures for particular kinds of claims. As 

such, we have held that this comprehensive employment 

scheme preempts judicial review under the more general APA 

even when that scheme provides no judicial relief—that is, 

“what you get under the CSRA is what you get.” Fornaro, 

416 F.3d at 67. In this case four air traffic controllers 

nonetheless argue that they may use the APA to litigate their 

pay dispute with the Federal Aviation Administration because 

the CSRA provides them no protection. Straightforwardly 

applying our precedent, we affirm the district court’s 

dismissal of their suit. 

I. 

Appellants are four air traffic controllers of the 

Albuquerque, New Mexico Air Traffic Control Center. Two 

are bargaining unit members represented by the National Air 

Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) while two are 

excluded from the unit as supervisors, but agreements 

between NATCA and the FAA control the pay of all four. 

Under those agreements, salary levels vary from airport to 

airport based on the amount and complexity of the air traffic 

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they manage. The controllers believe the Albuquerque 

Center’s salary level is set too low because, in their view, the 

site’s traffic figures erroneously exclude certain military 

flights. 

 In April 2000, one of the bargaining unit employees, 

appellant Joseph Filebark II, following the procedure set out 

in his collective bargaining agreement, filed a grievance about 

the salary-level classification with the Albuquerque Center. 

That grievance was denied, and when Filebark asked the 

union to pursue the matter to arbitration, the union declined. 

The Center itself later applied to the FAA for a salary-level 

upgrade, but that request was denied pending validation of the 

computer systems that measure air traffic. Although NATCA 

eventually filed a grievance on behalf of employees at the 

Albuquerque Center, it withdrew that grievance before it was 

decided. Meanwhile, one of the non–bargaining unit 

controllers attempted to file a grievance, which was refused. 

He later sued in the Court of Federal Claims on a contract 

theory, but the court rejected his claim as outside its Tucker 

Act jurisdiction. Todd v. United States, 56 Fed. Cl. 449, 453 

(2003), aff’d, 386 F.3d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 2004). 

 Having failed to obtain review on the merits through 

any of these avenues, the controllers brought a two-count 

complaint in United States District Court for the District of 

Columbia. Count I sought review of Filebark’s denied 

grievance, identifying 5 U.S.C. § 7121(a)(1), a provision of 

the CSRA, as the statutory basis for judicial review of 

negotiated grievance procedures. Am. Compl. ¶¶ 37–38. 

Count II sought APA review of the Albuquerque Center’s 

salary-level classification on behalf of all plaintiffs. Id. ¶¶ 

39–42. Concluding that section 7121(a)(1), rather than 

authorizing the suit, “precludes [employees with negotiated 

grievance procedures] from seeking judicial review” of any 

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kind, Filebark v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp. (Filebark I), 468 F. 

Supp. 2d 3, 6 (D.D.C. 2006), the district court dismissed both 

counts brought by the bargaining unit employees, eliminating 

Count I entirely and leaving only the APA claims of the non–

bargaining unit supervisors, id. at 6. Addressing and rejecting 

only one argument—regarding exhaustion of administrative 

remedies—the district court allowed the supervisors’ APA 

claims to go forward. Id. at 7–8. By minute order, the district 

court denied both sides’ requests for reconsideration. In a 

second opinion, however, it dismissed the supervisors’ APA 

claims, finding them precluded under our CSRA precedents. 

Filebark v. Dep’t of Transp. (Filebark II), 542 F. Supp. 2d 1, 

6–9 (D.D.C. 2008). 

 

 Significantly for our purposes, the FAA is largely 

exempted from the CSRA by 49 U.S.C. § 40122(g)(1), which 

directs the FAA to develop “a personnel management system 

for the Administration that addresses the unique demands on 

the agency’s workforce,” “notwithstanding the provisions of 

title 5 [i.e., the CSRA] and other Federal personnel laws.” 

See also § 40122(g)(2) (“The provisions of title 5 shall not 

apply to the new personnel management system . . . .”). 

Congress required that “[s]uch a new system shall, at a 

minimum, provide for greater flexibility in the hiring, 

training, compensation, and location of personnel.” 

§ 40122(g)(1). In response the FAA created a personnel 

management system with dispute resolution provisions that 

largely track those of the CSRA, providing greater review for 

major adverse actions and no review for minor actions like 

this pay-scale dispute. The general exemption from the 

CSRA has certain exceptions, however, as CSRA provisions 

such as “chapter 71, relating to labor-management relations,” 

continue to apply. § 40122(g)(2)(C). 

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 Among the provisions in that chapter that still apply is 

section 7121(a)(1), which requires that collective bargaining 

agreements contain negotiated procedures for the settlement 

of grievances, and which the controllers cite as the statutory 

basis for Count I of their amended complaint. This section 

previously provided that such negotiated grievance 

procedures would be “the exclusive procedures for resolving 

grievances which fall within its coverage.” 5 U.S.C. § 

7121(a)(1) (1994). In 1994, however, Congress amended 

section 7121(a)(1) to make negotiated grievance procedures 

“the exclusive administrative procedures for resolving 

grievances which fall within its coverage.” § 7121(a)(1) 

(emphasis added). Having held that the earlier version of this 

section precluded all judicial review for employees with 

negotiated grievance procedures, Carter v. Gibbs, 909 F.2d 

1452, 1454 (Fed. Cir. 1990) (en banc), the Federal Circuit 

recently reversed course, holding that the 1994 amendment 

signaled Congress’s intent no longer to preclude all review of 

covered grievances. Mudge v. United States, 308 F.3d 1220, 

1227 (Fed. Cir. 2002). 

 Seeking reversal of the district court’s ruling that they 

have no cause of action, the controllers make three arguments: 

(1) that the district court erred in dismissing the bargaining 

unit members because section 7121(a)(1), as amended, no 

longer precludes judicial review of negotiated grievance 

procedures; (2) that by revisiting dismissal of the APA claims, 

the district court violated the law of the case; and (3) that 

because their employer is largely exempt from the CSRA, the 

controllers can maintain an APA cause of action 

notwithstanding our CSRA preclusion precedents. We 

consider each argument in turn. 

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II. 

 The controllers’ first argument—applicable only to the 

bargaining unit members—lacks in relevance whatever it 

might have in merit. It may be true that in amending section 

7121(a)(1) Congress intended no longer to preclude all 

judicial review for employees with negotiated grievance 

procedures; it may also be true that Mudge correctly allowed 

the employees in that case to proceed; it may even be true that 

the district court’s first opinion in this case erroneously used 

section 7121(a)(1) as justification for dismissing all 

bargaining-unit employee claims. But even if section 

7121(a)(1) no longer has this preclusive effect, it is 

emphatically untrue that “§ 7121(a)(1) establishes [a] federal 

employee’s right to seek judicial remedy for [a] grievance 

subject to negotiated procedures in [a] collective bargaining 

agreement,” as the controllers maintain in their complaint, 

Am. Compl. ¶ 37 (emphasis added). To the contrary, as the 

Supreme Court explained in Whitman v. Department of 

Transportation, 547 U.S. 512, 513 (2006), section 

“7121(a)(1) does not confer jurisdiction,” nor does it create a 

cause of action. 

 Because section 7121(a)(1), by itself, provides no right 

to sue, the bargaining unit employees must point to an 

independent source of law in order to maintain this action. In 

Mudge a money claim within the Tucker Act jurisdiction of 

the Court of Federal Claims provided the cause of action, see 

28 U.S.C. § 1491(a)(1); Mudge v. United States, 50 Fed. Cl. 

500, 502 (Fed. Cl. 2001); in Carter, the case that Mudge held 

overruled by the 1994 amendment, the Fair Labor Standards 

Act, 29 U.S.C. § 216(b), provided the cause of action, see 909 

F.2d at 1453. Neither is available here. In fact, the only basis 

for a cause of action the bargaining unit controllers even 

mention in their complaint is the APA—the same source 

identified by the non–bargaining unit controllers. Thus, the 

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case for all four controllers begins and ends with the question 

identified as central by the Supreme Court in Whitman and 

answered in the district court’s second opinion—namely 

“whether § 7121 (or the CSRA as a whole) removes the 

jurisdiction given to the federal courts or otherwise precludes 

employees from pursuing” a claim under the APA, Whitman, 

547 U.S. at 514 (emphasis added, citation omitted). If we 

answer that question in the affirmative then neither the 

bargaining unit members nor the supervisors have a claim, 

whether or not the district court, in its first opinion, properly 

relied on section 7121(a)(1) to dismiss all bargaining unit 

employee claims. 

 Before we address that question, however, we must 

resolve a preliminary matter. The controllers argue that by 

reversing its previous denial of dismissal on the APA claims 

without a change in facts or law the district court violated the 

law of the case doctrine. In its second opinion, the district 

court explained the change as based in “the parties’ lack of 

clarity regarding their arguments,” and held that reconsidering 

the issue would not violate the law of the case because failing 

to reconsider would “be erroneous and work a manifest 

injustice.” Filebark II, 542 F. Supp. 2d at 5 n.10. These 

justifications matter not at all, however, because the law of 

the case doctrine just doesn’t apply here. Federal Rule of 

Civil Procedure 54(b) provides that “any order or other 

decision, however designated, that adjudicates fewer than all 

the claims . . . may be revised at any time before the entry of a 

judgment adjudicating all the claims and all the parties’ rights 

and liabilities.” The district court’s first denial of dismissal 

was never a final judgment and never subject to appeal, and 

such “[i]nterlocutory orders are not subject to the law of the 

case doctrine and may always be reconsidered prior to final 

judgment,” Langevine v. District of Columbia, 106 F.3d 1018, 

1023 (D.C. Cir. 1997). Accordingly, the district court was 

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free to reconsider the motion to dismiss the controllers’ APAbased employment claim, as we are free to consider that 

question now. 

Reviewing de novo the dismissal of the APA claims, e.g., 

Munsell v. Dep’t of Agric., 509 F.3d 572, 578 (D.C. Cir. 

2007), we find no error in the district court’s decision. 

Twenty-five years ago, in Carducci v. Regan, we held that 

“the exhaustive remedial scheme of the CSRA would be 

impermissibly frustrated by permitting, for lesser personnel 

actions not involving constitutional claims, an access to the 

courts more immediate and direct than the statute provides 

with regard to major adverse actions.” 714 F.2d at 174. 

Holding that “failure to include some types of [claims] within 

the remedial scheme of so comprehensive a piece of 

legislation reflects a congressional intent that no judicial relief 

be available,” we found an APA remedy beyond that provided 

in the CSRA precluded by the comprehensiveness of the 

CSRA itself. Id. at 174–75. The Supreme Court reached a 

similar conclusion five years later in United States v. Fausto, 

holding that the exclusion of particular employees (rather than 

particular claims) from the CSRA was not an invitation to 

those employees to sue under other statutes but a 

“manifestation of a considered congressional judgment that 

they should not have statutory entitlement to review.” 484 

U.S. 439, 448–49 (1988). 

 We clarified the breadth of these precedents in two recent 

cases. In Graham v. Ashcroft, we held that the lack of any 

entitlement to judicial review in the CSRA precluded 

litigation of an employment matter under the APA even 

where the complaint did not concern “‘a type of personnel 

action covered by the CSRA.’” 358 F.3d 931, 934 (D.C. Cir. 

2004) (quoting Fausto, 484 U.S. at 448 (emphasis added, 

brackets omitted)). Thus, we found preclusion not because 

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the CSRA identified some other kind of plaintiff or some 

other kind of procedure for bringing the claim, but because it 

provided no way of bringing it. As to such claims we said, 

“the CSRA provides no relief and precludes other avenues of 

relief.” Id. at 935. One year later in Fornaro we made the 

point even more directly, holding that “what you get under the 

CSRA is what you get.” 416 F.3d at 67. Not one of our 

precedents has cited section 7121(a)(1) in so holding, and the 

controllers nowhere argue that the 1994 amendment affects 

these cases or their now-familiar analysis. 

 

 To be sure, the controllers correctly point out that 

Congress largely exempted the FAA from the CSRA, and that 

we have never before had occasion to apply our preclusion 

cases to employees of an exempt agency. But the upshot of 

our precedents for this case is absolutely clear. Far from 

saving an APA claim, Congress’s exemption of these 

controllers’ agency from the CSRA signals the same thing as 

Congress’s omission of the type of personnel action at issue in 

Graham or the type of employees at issue in Fausto—namely 

that Congress intended to provide these employees with no 

judicial review. This is because we treat the CSRA and 

Congress’s related employment statutes as covering the field 

of federal employee claims, and so our cases expressly teach 

that those left out of this scheme are left out on purpose. 

Indeed this case is easier than most, for we need make no 

inferences about the pregnant meaning of legislative silence. 

In exempting the FAA from the CSRA, Congress made its 

intent perfectly clear: to “provide for greater flexibility in the 

hiring, training, compensation, and location of personnel.” 49 

U.S.C. § 40122(g)(1). Because giving FAA employees a 

unique right of access to the courts would frustrate rather than 

further that intent, proper application of our precedents bars 

this suit. See also McAuliffe v. Rice, 966 F.2d 979, 980–81 

(5th Cir. 1992) (reaching same conclusion as to different 

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entity exempted from CSRA because allowing APA review 

would “thwart[] the goal of maintaining flexibility”). 

 The controllers argue that “[w]hatever the scope of the 

‘flexibility’ which Congress granted to the FAA, it is 

inconceivable that Congress authorized the FAA to devise a 

compensation plan for its Controllers and then violate that 

plan with impunity and without review.” Appellants’ 

Opening Br. 30. The controllers never develop this apparent 

due process argument, nor could they, for even its factual 

premise is flawed. The controllers do have a remedy: if the 

FAA fails to live up to its agreements, the union can pursue 

the matter, see, e.g., Mot. to Dismiss Ex. 9 (union grievance 

regarding Albuquerque Center salary level), and if the union 

fails to live up to its duty of representation, the controllers can 

pursue the union, see Steadman v. Governor, U.S. Soldiers’ 

and Airmen’s Home, 918 F.2d 963, 966 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (“A 

failure to seek arbitration (which an employee may not 

compel on his own) may constitute such a breach of the 

union’s duty [of fair representation]. But, in that event, only 

the FLRA—not a district court—may remedy the breach by 

ordering arbitration.”). These procedures surely lack the 

directness and immediacy of an APA suit, and the controllers 

have apparently found them frustrating, Appellants’ Reply Br. 

6–7 n.5 (accusing NACTA of “machinations” designed to 

defeat Filebark’s claims). But the choice of procedures lies 

with Congress, and as we have repeatedly held, Congress had 

no intention of providing claimants like these—unmentioned 

in the CSRA—with a level of access to the courts unavailable 

to almost any other federal employees, including those that 

the CSRA identifies as most worthy of procedural protection. 

See Graham, 358 F.3d at 935 (citing Fausto and Carducci for 

the proposition that giving direct APA review to claimants not 

entitled to review procedures under the CSRA would upset 

careful congressional layering of remedial procedures). Thus, 

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we find this APA claim precluded by the structure of 

Congress’s employment statutes and “the CSRA as a whole,” 

Whitman, 547 U.S. at 514. 

 

III. 

 Because the controllers identify only the APA as the 

statutory basis for their claims, and because such claims are 

precluded by the CSRA as a whole regardless of who brings 

them, we affirm. 

So ordered. 

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