Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-97-05326/USCOURTS-caDC-97-05326-0/pdf.json

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 October 2, 1998 Decided November 3, 1998

No. 97-5326

Lawana Powell,

Appellant

v.

Department of Defense,

Appellee

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(96cv01705)

Mark S. Davies argued the cause for appellant. With him

on the briefs was Gary A. Orseck.

David T. Smorodin, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Wilma A.

Lewis, U.S. Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S.

Attorney.

Before: Henderson, Randolph, and Tatel, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Randolph.

Randolph, Circuit Judge: Lawana Powell had been a longtime federal employee when, in 1995, she was--according to

her lights--constructively terminated from her job as a personnel security specialist in the Department of Defense. In

response to some unexplained absences--a source of suspicion in a security-conscious agency like the Defense Department--Powell was given the choice of accepting reassignment

to a non-sensitive temporary position or submitting to immediate termination. She chose the former. Powell's temporary position expired on March 31, 1995, and, due to "regionalization and reinvention," it was not renewed.

Powell appealed the agency's action to the Merit Systems

Protection Board ("the Board") as a "mixed case" appeal, that

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is, an appeal alleging both a Board-jurisdictional agency

action and a claim of unlawful discrimination. See 5 U.S.C.

ss 7702, 7703(b)(2); 29 C.F.R. s 1614.302(a)(2). Notwithstanding Powell's claim that her separation from the Department had been involuntary, the Board dismissed her appeal,

stating that she had "not raised issue[s] of fact sufficient to

support her claim of jurisdiction." Because Powell had chosen to accept reassignment, the Board reasoned, her termination had been voluntary. The Board has no jurisdiction

over cases involving voluntary terminations, see 5 U.S.C.

s 7512; 5 C.F.R. s 752.401(9), and it determined that Powell's case was therefore outside its jurisdiction.

The Board supplies a standard notice to unsuccessful appellants warning that judicial review of adverse decisions lies in

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Despite

this notice, Powell filed in the district court, pursuant to 5

U.S.C. ss 7702(a)(1) and 7703(b)(2). These provisions grant

jurisdiction to the district courts to review adverse Board

decisions in mixed cases. The district court, however, ruled

that Powell's case was not a true mixed case because it

included only a discrimination claim and not a Boardjurisdictional claim. The court therefore dismissed for lack of

jurisdiction.1 The court relied upon Ballentine v. Merit

__________

1 The Department also moved in the district court for dismissal

on grounds of improper venue, claiming that Powell should have

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Systems Protection Board, 738 F.2d 1244, 1247 (Fed. Cir.

1984), which recognized an exception to the district courts'

jurisdiction for mixed cases in which the Board has dismissed,

not on the merits, but on jurisdictional or procedural grounds.

The district court therefore ruled that jurisdiction over Powell's appeal was proper only in the Federal Circuit because

the Board had dismissed on jurisdictional grounds rather

than on the merits. It is now too late for Powell to seek

review of the Board's decision in the Federal Circuit. See 5

U.S.C. s 7703(b)(1) (parties must seek review within 30 days

of receiving notice of final order of Board).

Whether the district court or, instead, the Federal Circuit

had jurisdiction to review the Board's adverse action, turns on

the nature of the Board's decision in this case. In general, 5

U.S.C. ss 7702 and 7703 govern judicial review of Board

decisions. Section 7703(b)(1) gives the Federal Circuit jurisdiction over "petition[s] to review a final order or final

decision of the Board...." 5 U.S.C. s 7703(b)(1); see also 28

U.S.C. s 1295(a)(9). There is, however, an exception to Federal Circuit jurisdiction. Section s 7703(b)(2) gives jurisdiction to the district courts for "cases of discrimination subject

to the provisions of section 7702 of this title...." 5 U.S.C.

s 7703(b)(2). Section 7702 lists the categories of cases within

the jurisdiction of the district courts. In order to come

within one of these categories, the complainant must satisfy

two requirements. First, he must have been "affected by an

action which the employee or applicant may appeal to the

Merit Systems Protection Board." 5 U.S.C. s 7702(a)(1)(A).

The types of adverse actions over which the Board has

jurisdiction are listed in 5 U.S.C. s 7512. Second, the employee must allege "that a basis for the action was discrimination prohibited by--(i) section 717 of the Civil Rights Act of

1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000e-16)...." 5 U.S.C. s 7702(a)(1)(B).

__________

sued in the Eastern District of Virginia. On appeal, the Department contends that transfer to the appropriate district court is the

remedy for improper venue. We find it unnecessary to reach the

venue question.

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Although ss 7702 and 7703(b)(2) grant district courts jurisdiction to review Board decisions in mixed-case appeals, the

Federal Circuit holds that those provisions do not defeat its

jurisdiction under s 7703(b)(1) to review certain decisions in

which the Board has dismissed on procedural or threshold

grounds. See Ballentine, 738 F.2d at 1247. In Ballentine,

the Board had decided that it lacked jurisdiction over a

mixed-case appeal because the complainant, who had been

demoted by the U.S. Marshals Service, filed his appeal prematurely. Id. at 1245. When the complainant appealed the

Board's dismissal to the Federal Circuit, the Board moved to

transfer the appeal to district court, which, according to the

Board, had jurisdiction over mixed-case appeals pursuant to 5

U.S.C. s 7703(b)(2). Id. The Federal Circuit denied the

transfer, holding that "[w]hen an appeal has been taken to the

[Board], until the discrimination issue and the appealable

action have been decided on the merits by the [Board], an

appellant is granted no rights to a trial de novo in a civil

action...." Id. at 1246. The Board in Ballentine had not

reached the merits; its dismissal on grounds of timeliness

was purely procedural. Id. at 1248. "[U]ntil the merits of a

'mixed' discrimination case are reached by the [Board]," the

court continued, "procedural or threshold matters, not related

to the merits of a discrimination claim before the [Board],

may properly be appealed to [the Federal Circuit]." Id. at

1247.

Powell uses the statement just quoted to argue that Ballentine does not control jurisdiction over her appeal. Ballentine,

she points out, only applies to mixed-case appeals in which

the Board has not reached the merits. Powell asserts that

here, by contrast, the Board's decision was "related to the

merits" of her discrimination claim because proof of constructive termination would necessarily be an element of her claim.

Powell is correct that the factual setting of Ballentine is

not precisely the same as her case. She is not correct in

arguing that Ballentine has no bearing on the jurisdictional

issue. It may be true that evidence of voluntariness or

constructive termination is more closely "related to the merits

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sented in Ballentine. But even if the Board's decision regarding voluntariness is "related to the merits" of Powell's

discrimination claim, that decision nevertheless also rested on

a "procedural or threshold matter"--the Board's view of its

jurisdiction. The Board was quite emphatic on the point:

"Appellant has failed to show that the reassignment was

involuntary.... [A]ppellant has failed to establish Board

jurisdiction.... [A]ppellant's allegations of discrimination,

alone, cannot invoke the Board's jurisdiction.... [A]ppellant

has not raised issues of fact sufficient to support her claim of

jurisdiction...." Powell has offered no good reason2 why

Board decisions based on procedural or threshold matters

that are related to the merits should not, under Ballentine, be

reviewable in the Federal Circuit, and two federal courts of

appeal have decided that they should be. See Sloan v. West,

140 F.3d 1255, 1261-62 (9th Cir. 1998); Wall v. United States,

871 F.2d 1540, 1543-44 (10th Cir. 1989).

In Sloan, a civilian employee of the Army Corps of Engineers had been retroactively promoted to a higher GS level--

an action triggering an automatic termination provision ending his employment. Sloan, 140 F.3d at 1257. On the

employee's administrative appeal of his termination, the

Board dismissed, finding that the termination had not been

involuntary and that the Board therefore had no jurisdiction

over the appeal. Id. at 1258. When the employee sought

review in district court, the district court also dismissed for

lack of jurisdiction, holding that because the Board's dismissal had been on jurisdictional grounds, only the Federal Circuit could review the adverse decision. Id. The Ninth

Circuit affirmed, stating that even when "the jurisdictional

question is intertwined with the discrimination claim," id. at

1261, review of an adverse Board decision is proper only in

the Federal Circuit. Id. at 1262.

__________

2 We reject Powell's argument that the doctrine of collateral

estoppel is likely to preclude mixed-case complainants' litigation of

the merits in federal district court after the Federal Circuit has

reviewed the related procedural issue.

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Similarly, the Tenth Circuit's Wall opinion made it clear

that a voluntariness determination by the Board fell within

the scope of Ballentine and was thus appealable only to the

Federal Circuit. Wall, 871 F.2d at 1543. In Wall, an employee of the Department of Health and Human Services had

executed an application for retirement shortly before having

his employment terminated. Id. at 1541. The employee

appealed the termination to the Board, arguing that he had

been misled into applying for retirement and claiming wrongful termination based on a physical handicap. Id. The Board

found that the employee's retirement had been voluntary, and

therefore dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Id. at 1542. The

employee sought review in the district court, and the Tenth

Circuit ultimately affirmed the district court's dismissal for

lack of subject matter jurisdiction, holding that only the

Federal Circuit had jurisdiction to review a Board decision

made on jurisdictional grounds. Id.

Powell objects that the courts in Sloan and Wall failed to

provide reasons for extending Ballentine to situations like

hers, in which the Board's decision on threshold or procedural

grounds is related to the merits of a discrimination claim.

This system, she tells us, is potentially duplicative: if the

Federal Circuit reverses such a Board decision, and the

Board reaches the merits on remand, judicial review would

then be in district court. While Sloan and Wall offered little

in the way of analysis, we think the decisions were nevertheless correct. The main point of Ballentine is that the boundaries of the Board's jurisdiction should be subject to uniform

interpretation in a single forum--the Federal Circuit. See

Ballentine, 738 F.2d at 1247. To hold that Ballentine does

not apply in a case such as Powell's would be to undermine

Ballentine. District courts--and, in appeals, the circuit

courts--would wind up determining questions of Board jurisdiction, with potentially inconsistent results. By adopting the

approach of Sloan and Wall, we create no more potential for

duplicative judicial review--or more accurately, successive

judicial review--than that created by Ballentine itself.

We are aware that mixed-case complainants like Powell, to

be absolutely safe, might see fit to file simultaneously in the

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Federal Circuit and in the district court. Otherwise, if the

complainant chooses the wrong judicial forum for reviewing

the Board's decision, he may be unable to obtain any review

because the time for appealing in the correct forum has

passed. Indeed, even if the complainant chooses the right

forum or appeals the Board's jurisdictional dismissal to both

courts, he may be unable to obtain any review because the

time for pursuing an Equal Employment Opportunity remedy

will have run. As the government acknowledged at oral

argument, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations provide for tolling if the Board dismisses the appeal

for jurisdictional reasons but apparently leave a gap in the

tolling when the complainant elects to pursue an appeal of the

Board decision in the Federal Circuit. See 29 C.F.R.

s 1614.302(b). Because this gap in protection is inconsistent

with the statutory purpose of preserving the rights of federal

employees who seek review of mixed-case appeals in federal

district court, we suggest that the agency consider amending

its regulations.3

So ordered.

__________

3 The district court stated that transfer of this case to the

Federal Circuit would be improper because Powell filed her complaint past the time for seeking Federal Circuit review. See 5

U.S.C. s 7703(b)(1). We decline to consider whether transfer is

appropriate here. Even if this were a case in which the "interests

of justice" required such a transfer, see, e.g., Ramey v. Bowsher, 9

F.3d 133, 137 (D.C. Cir. 1994), Powell has not sought such relief in

this court.

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