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Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 13, 2008 Decided December 12, 2008 

No. 07-5391 

WENDY A. OSCARSON, 

APPELLEE

v. 

OFFICE OF THE SENATE SERGEANT AT ARMS, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 04cv00026) 

M. Stacey Bach, Senate Senior Counsel for Employment, 

Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms, argued the cause for 

appellant. With her on the briefs were Jean M. Manning, 

Senate Chief Counsel for Employment, and C. Patrick 

McMurray, Senate Assistant Counsel for Employment. 

Avi L. Kumin argued the cause for appellee. With him on 

the brief were Debra S. Katz, Lisa J. Banks, and Daniel B. 

Edelman.

Before: GARLAND and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

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Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Wendy A. Oscarson is 

an employee of the Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms 

(“SAA”); she suffers from cervical disc disease and left carpal 

tunnel syndrome. In 2002, she requested accommodations in 

the form of ergonomic, high-backed chairs for each of her 

three work stations. Although SAA officials eventually made 

these accommodations, Oscarson asserts that in doing so they 

unreasonably delayed. She brought suit against the SAA 

under the Congressional Accountability Act (“CAA”), which 

makes certain provisions of the Americans with Disabilities 

Act (“ADA”) applicable to congressional offices. 2 U.S.C. 

§ 1311(a)(3). 

The SAA moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter 

jurisdiction. It claimed that Oscarson had failed to comply 

with the CAA’s requirement that a request for counseling be 

filed with the Senate’s Office of Compliance within 180 days 

of the alleged violation. 2 U.S.C. § 1402. The SAA argued 

that this stripped the district court of jurisdiction, claiming 

that the CAA’s jurisdictional provision, 2 U.S.C. § 1408, 

incorporated the timeliness requirement of § 1402 and made 

compliance with it a condition of the CAA’s waiver of 

sovereign immunity. The district judge denied the motion in a 

minute order, and the SAA now seeks an interlocutory appeal. 

We dismiss the appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction. 

* * * 

The federal courts of appeals have jurisdiction over the 

“final decisions” of district courts. 28 U.S.C. § 1291. 

Interlocutory appeals “are the exception, not the rule,” 

Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 309 (1995), and denials of 

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motions to dismiss are generally not reviewable. McSurely v. 

McClellan, 697 F.2d 309, 315 (D.C. Cir. 1982). In Cohen v. 

Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546 (1949), 

however, the Supreme Court established that certain collateral 

orders are immediately appealable. To come within the scope 

of the collateral order doctrine, an order must “[1] 

conclusively determine the disputed question, [2] resolve an 

important issue completely separate from the merits of the 

action, and [3] be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a 

final judgment.” Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 

463, 468 (1978). 

The courts have allowed interlocutory appeals for various 

immunity defenses, reasoning that reversal after final 

judgment gives no effective protection for the right not to bear 

the burden of litigation. See Rendall-Speranza v. Nassim, 107 

F.3d 913, 916 (D.C. Cir. 1997). They have approved such 

appeals, for example, for denials of qualified immunity, 

Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985), Eleventh 

Amendment immunity, Puerto Rico Aqueduct & Sewer Auth. 

v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U.S. 139, 144 (1993), and a 

foreign state’s sovereign immunity, Princz v. Federal 

Republic of Germany, 998 F.2d 1, 1 (D.C. Cir. 1993). 

There are a number of questions that would have to be 

answered affirmatively for interlocutory review to be proper 

here, including, among others: (1) whether such review is 

available for defenses of federal sovereign immunity at all; (2) 

whether the CAA can be read as making the timeliness of a 

request for counseling jurisdictional, or has otherwise signaled 

an intent to protect the SAA from the burden of litigation in 

the absence of a timely request; and (3) whether the nature of 

the dispute over timeliness, given its factbound character and 

its overlap with the merits, is such that interlocutory review 

would be permitted if the first two hurdles were overcome. 

We assume arguendo answers to the first two issues in favor 

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of the SAA, but conclude that the answer to the third question 

is negative and fatal to our jurisdiction. 

 First, we note an apparent split in the circuits over 

whether denials of claims of federal sovereign immunity may 

ever qualify for interlocutory review. Alaska v. United States, 

64 F.3d 1352, 1355 (9th Cir. 1995); Pullman Constr. Indus. v. 

United States, 23 F.3d 1166, 1168 (7th Cir. 1994) (“[T]he 

United States Code is riddled with statutes authorizing relief 

against the United States and its agencies . . . . [I]t is difficult 

to speak of federal sovereign immunity as a ‘right not to be 

sued.’”); see also Houston Cmty. Hosp. v. Blue Cross & Blue 

Shield of Tex., Inc., 481 F.3d 265, 280 (5th Cir. 2007). But 

see In re World Trade Ctr. Disaster Site Litig., 521 F.3d 169, 

191 (2d Cir. 2008) (“We are not convinced that Pullman or its 

progeny counsel us to disregard the statements of the Supreme 

Court that sovereign immunity encompasses a right not to be 

sued . . . .”). A decision in this circuit expressed skepticism 

about the cases saying that federal sovereign immunity 

categorically excludes a right not to be sued, but expressly 

declined to resolve the issue. In re Sealed Case No. 99-3091, 

192 F.3d 995, 1000 (D.C. Cir. 1999). We also do not need to 

reach it today. 

Second, we note the complexities of the question whether 

the CAA implies that the SAA should be protected from the 

burdens of suit in the absence of a timely request for 

counseling. The appellant’s attorney conceded at oral 

argument that if § 1402’s timeliness criterion is not 

jurisdictional, there can be no interlocutory appeal. Oral 

Argument Rec. 3:23-3:25. We need not decide whether this 

concession accurately reflects the law. On the one hand, 

statutes of limitations generally do not give rise to a right not 

to stand trial. See Digital Equip. Corp. v. Desktop Direct. 

Inc., 511 U.S. 863, 873 (1994). On the other hand, the 

Supreme Court offered its principal explanation for allowing 

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interlocutory appeal in the immunity context in Mitchell v. 

Forsyth, addressing officials’ qualified immunity—an 

immunity that was itself entirely a judicial creation. 472 U.S. 

at 524-30. Apart from that, there is uncertainty whether the 

CAA time limitation is in fact jurisdictional, and whether, if it 

is, a district court’s finding of jurisdiction is subject to 

interlocutory review. 

In any event, assuming arguendo answers to these 

questions favorable to the SAA, we lack jurisdiction over this 

appeal. The district court’s decision appears to be simply a 

conclusion that the rather complex concatenation of 

undisputed facts failed to establish that Oscarson’s request for 

counseling was untimely. Our interlocutory review of such a 

determination would be at odds with the principles set out by 

the Supreme Court in Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 309 

(1995); moreover, as the facts in question are bound up with 

the merits of the appellee’s claim, the issue fails to satisfy the 

Cohen test’s requirement that it be completely separate from 

the merits of the underlying action, Coopers & Lybrand, 437 

U.S. at 468. 

* * * 

 In Johnson the appellants sought to challenge the district 

judge’s determination that there was sufficient evidence to 

raise a triable issue of fact with respect to their qualified 

immunity defense. 515 U.S. at 308. The question before the 

Court was whether Mitchell v. Forsyth’s provision for 

interlocutory review would reach such a question of evidence 

sufficiency. Id. The Court denied interlocutory review and 

held that immediate appeals of qualified immunity matters 

would be limited to cases presenting relatively “abstract issues 

of law.” Id. at 317. 

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 On the conceptual level, the Court explained, 

interlocutory review of fact-related determinations does not 

comport with Cohen’s theory of appealability. Id. at 314. 

Cohen allows for interlocutory appeals only where the 

“decision involves issues significantly different from those 

that underlie the plaintiff’s basic case.” Id. Where 

defendants seek to appeal evidence sufficiency 

determinations, however, “it will often prove difficult to find 

any such ‘separate’ question—one that is significantly 

different from the fact-related legal issues that likely underlie 

the plaintiff’s claim on the merits.” Id. 

 In practical terms, the Court found that “the competing 

considerations that underlie questions of finality” counseled 

against immediate review for this class of decisions. Id. at 

315-16. First, because trial judges constantly confront 

questions such as the existence or non-existence of a triable 

issue of fact, “appellate judges enjoy no comparative expertise 

in such matters” and “interlocutory appeals are less likely to 

bring important error-correcting benefits here than where 

purely legal matters are at issue, as in Mitchell.” Id. at 316. 

Second, assessing “whether or not a record demonstrates a 

‘genuine’ issue of fact for trial . . . can consume inordinate 

amounts of appellate time,” leading to greater delay than in 

cases such as Mitchell, involving a pure issue of law. Id. 

Third, interlocutory appeals of such rulings would “make[] 

unwise use of appellate courts’ time, by forcing them to 

decide in the context of a less developed record, an issue very 

similar to one they may well decide anyway later, on a record 

that will permit a better decision.” Id. at 317. All in all, 

“considerations of delay, comparative expertise of trial and 

appellate courts, and wise use of appellate resources argue in 

favor of limiting interlocutory appeals of ‘qualified immunity’ 

matters to cases presenting more abstract issues of law.” Id. 

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Although this case concerns federal sovereign immunity 

rather than qualified immunity, we cannot imagine why the 

Johnson principles would not apply with equal force to the 

immunity claim here. See Burlington Northern & Santa Fe 

Ry. v. Vaughn, 509 F.3d 1085, 1091 (9th Cir. 2007) (applying 

Johnson in the context of a tribal immunity claim and stating 

that “denial of an immunity claim is appealable on an 

interlocutory basis only to the extent that it turns on an issue 

of law” (emphasis added)). We must therefore determine 

whether this appeal turns on the sort of abstract legal issue 

that Johnson would permit us to review. 

* * * 

 The task of determining what kind of issue this appeal 

presents is complicated somewhat by the fact that the district 

judge denied the appellant’s Rule 12(b)(1) motion in a minute 

order, without providing reasons for doing so. The basis for 

his decision, however, is reasonably clear. 

In its motion, the SAA argued that the timeliness 

requirement of § 1402 was jurisdictional, and that Oscarson 

had failed to meet it because her own statements indicated that 

her injury had accrued more than 180 days before she 

requested counseling. Def.’s Mot. to Dismiss at 6-8. In her 

opposition to the motion, Oscarson did not contest that the 

requirement was jurisdictional, but argued that she had 

complied with it. Pl.’s Opp’n to Def.’s Mot. to Dismiss at 4-

13. Although the argument was not before the judge, it is 

theoretically possible that he denied the motion on the 

grounds that the requirement was not jurisdictional. But if the 

judge held that view, he could simply have recast the Rule 

12(b)(1) motion as one under Rule 12(b)(6); we find it 

unlikely that he would silently deny the motion on the theory 

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that it was wrongly numbered. We therefore reject this 

hypothesis as extremely improbable. 

 We are left with the conclusion that the district judge 

rejected the SAA’s assertion that under the facts claimed by 

Oscarson—which were undisputed for purposes of the SAA’s 

motion—her counseling request was untimely. This 

determination does not turn on an abstract question of law, 

Johnson, 515 U.S. at 313, and does not address an issue 

separate from the merits of the underlying action, Coopers & 

Lybrand, 437 U.S. at 468. 

 The SAA asserts that a claim accrues when the plaintiff 

knows or should know about the injury. Appellant’s Br. at 30. 

It reasons that a number of facts contained in Oscarson’s 

statements and allegations—for example, her assertion that in 

October 2002 she felt that the SAA “had completely dropped 

the ball” on her accommodation request—establish that she 

knew of her injury more than 180 days before she requested 

counseling. Id. at 38. Oscarson counters that other facts—for 

example, that she stayed in contact with SAA officials 

regarding her accommodation request well into 2003—

demonstrate that she did not yet know about the injury. 

Appellee’s Br. at 36. Thus the dispute is, as in Johnson, over 

the legal classification of a congeries of facts, here facts on 

which the parties conditionally agree. Therefore, the 

“considerations of delay, comparative expertise of trial and 

appellate courts, and wise use of appellate resources,” 

Johnson, 515 U.S. at 317, counsel against interlocutory 

review just as strongly in this case. 

The SAA’s briefs twice call our attention to the fact that 

its motion to dismiss assumed the validity of the facts asserted 

by Oscarson. Appellant’s Br. at 3 n.3; Appellant’s Reply Br. 

at 8. Accordingly, it argues, Johnson “is inapposite.” Id. at 8 

n.10. The argument completely misconceives the Johnson

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rule. Johnson itself addressed an appeal by defendants from 

the district court’s denial of their summary judgment motion, 

Johnson, 515 U.S. at 307-08, 319-20; see also Jones v. 

Johnson, 26 F.3d 727 (7th Cir. 1994), a ruling that courts of 

appeal review de novo as a matter of law. Defenders of 

Wildlife v. Gutierrez, 532 F.3d 913, 918 (D.C. Cir. 2008). 

There, as here, the question was how the law applied to the 

rather complex set of facts asserted by the non-moving party. 

There had been no fact-finding by the district court, and no 

call on the court of appeals to review any purely factual 

determinations. But Johnson and this case pose the sort of 

fact-rich legal issues for which the theory of interlocutory 

review under Cohen is inapplicable, at least in the immunity 

context. 

Johnson’s observation that factual issues would often be 

difficult to separate from the merits of the underlying action 

also applies here. Id. at 314. Whether a CAA plaintiff timely 

requested counseling depends on the date of the alleged 

violation, which in turn depends on what constitutes a 

violation and on pinpointing the time of its occurrence. Here 

the SAA suggests that Oscarson knew or should have known 

of the injury underlying her claim when she “reasonably 

should have suspected that her rights were violated,” 

Appellant’s Br. at 31, raising a question that can only be 

answered by considering at what point the alleged delay might 

be thought to amount to a violation. In a case of delayed 

accommodation, such as the present one, merits and 

timeliness of request for counseling are tightly meshed. 

Because of the mingling of preliminary and merits issues, 

the SAA’s appeal fails not only Johnson’s requirement but 

also the second necessary condition for an interlocutory 

appeal under the collateral order doctrine—that the issue be 

“completely separate from the merits of the action.” Coopers 

& Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. at 468. 

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Under both Cohen and Johnson, therefore, we lack 

jurisdiction over this appeal. 

* * * 

The appeal is 

Dismissed. 

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