Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-03039/USCOURTS-ca13-15-03039-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Laurence M. Fedora
Petitioner
Merit Systems Protection Board
Respondent
United States Postal Service
Intervenor

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

LAURENCE M. FEDORA,

Petitioner

v.

MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD,

Respondent

UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE,

Intervenor

______________________ 

2015-3039

______________________ 

Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection 

Board in No. SF-0752-13-0433-I-1.

______________________ 

Decided: February 16, 2017

______________________ 

LAURENCE M. FEDORA, Portland, OR, pro se. 

LINDSEY SCHRECKENGOST, Office of the General Counsel, Merit Systems Protection Board, Washington, DC, for 

respondent. Also represented by BRYAN G. POLISUK.

RUSSELL JAMES UPTON, Commercial Litigation 

Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of 

Justice, Washington, DC, for intervenor. Also represented 

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2 FEDORA v. MSPB

by BENJAMIN C. MIZER, ROBERT E. KIRSCHMAN, JR.,

PATRICIA M. MCCARTHY.

______________________ 

Before DYK, PLAGER, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge DYK. 

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge PLAGER. 

DYK, Circuit Judge. 

Laurence Fedora petitions for review of a final order 

of the Merit Systems Protection Board (“Board”) dismissing his appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Because Mr. Fedora 

failed to timely file his petition for review with this court 

within 60 days after the Board issued notice of its final 

order, we dismiss his petition for review for lack of jurisdiction. See 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1)(A).

BACKGROUND

Mr. Fedora began his employment with the United 

States Postal Service in 1980. He was employed as a Mail 

Handler in the Portland Processing and Distribution 

Center at the time of his retirement on August 31, 2012. 

On April 27, 2013, Mr. Fedora filed an appeal with the 

Board alleging that his retirement was involuntary and 

amounted to constructive discharge. He claimed that he 

was forced to perform work in violation of his medical 

restrictions, was harassed, and was improperly threatened with removal and loss of his pension.

On August 12, 2013, the administrative judge (“AJ”)

found that Mr. Fedora had failed to make a non-frivolous 

allegation that his retirement was involuntary and dismissed his appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Mr. Fedora then

filed a petition for review by the Board.

On August 15, 2014, the Board issued a final order affirming the initial decision by the AJ. The Board’s final 

order stated that Mr. Fedora had “the right to request 

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FEDORA v. MSPB 3

review of [its] final decision by the United States Court of 

Appeals for the Federal Circuit” and that the “court must 

receive [his] request for review no later than 60 calendar 

days after the date of [the Board’s] order.” App. 36. He 

filed a petition for review in this court on October 20, 

2014. His petition for review was filed within 60 days of 

his receipt of the order (August 19, 2014),1 but not within 

60 days of issuance of the notice (August 15, 2014).

DISCUSSION

I 

This court has jurisdiction to review final decisions by 

the Board pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9) and 5 U.S.C. 

§ 7703(b)(1)(A). However, this jurisdiction is circumscribed by the terms of § 7703(b)(1)(A), which provides: 

“[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law, any petition for review shall be filed within 60 days after the 

Board issues notice of the final order or decision of the 

Board.” We have previously held that the requirements of 

this provision are “statutory, mandatory, [and] jurisdictional,” Monzo v. Dep’t of Transp., 735 F.2d 1335, 1336

(Fed. Cir. 1984), and that “[c]ompliance with the filing 

deadline of 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1) is a prerequisite to our 

exercise of jurisdiction,” Oja v. Dep’t of the Army, 405 F.3d 

1349, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2005).

The dissent suggests that these cases are no longer 

good law because the Supreme Court in recent years has 

recognized that not all statutory time limits are properly 

characterized as jurisdictional. We think that those cases 

do not undermine our holdings that the appeal period of 

§ 7703(b)(1) is jurisdictional. Many of the Supreme 

Court’s cases cited by the dissent hold generally that 

 

1 Since 60 days from August 19, 2014 would end on 

October 18, 2014, a Saturday, the period would run until 

Monday, October 20, 2014. See Fed. R. App. P. 26(a)(1).

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4 FEDORA v. MSPB

limitations periods (“claims-processing rules”) are not 

jurisdictional. See, e.g., United States v. Kwai Fun Wong, 

135 S. Ct. 1625, 1638 (2015) (holding that the time limits 

for filing a claim against the United States under the 

Federal Tort Claims Act “are nonjurisdictional and subject to equitable tolling”); Irwin v. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95–96 (1990) (holding that there is a 

rebuttable presumption that the statutory time limit for 

filing a Title VII suit against the United States after final 

agency action is subject to equitable tolling). Those cases 

do not concern appeal periods. Appeal periods to Article 

III courts, such as the period in § 7703(b)(1), are controlled by the Court’s decision in Bowles v. Russell, 551 

U.S. 205 (2007).

In Bowles, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that “the 

taking of an appeal within the prescribed time is ‘mandatory and jurisdictional.’” 551 U.S. at 209 (quoting Griggs 

v. Provident Consumer Disc. Co., 459 U.S. 56, 61 (1982)). 

The Court recognized that “several . . . recent decisions 

have undertaken to clarify the distinction between claimsprocessing rules and jurisdictional rules, [but concluded 

that] none of them calls into question [the Court’s] 

longstanding treatment of statutory time limits for taking 

an appeal as jurisdictional.” Id. at 210. Accordingly, the 

Court held that compliance with the appeal period prescribed in 28 U.S.C. § 2107(c) is jurisdictional and not 

subject to equitable tolling or the unique circumstances 

doctrine. Id. at 212–14.

The Supreme Court’s subsequent opinion in Reed 

Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154 (2010), explicitly 

recognized the distinction between statutory time limits 

for filing appeals and time limits or other requirements in 

non-appeal contexts. There, the Court stated:

In Bowles, we considered 28 U.S.C. § 2107, which 

requires parties in a civil action to file a notice of 

appeal within 30 days . . . . After analyzing 

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FEDORA v. MSPB 5

§ 2107’s specific language and this Court’s historical treatment of the type of limitation § 2107 imposes (i.e., statutory deadlines for filing appeals), 

we concluded that Congress had ranked the statutory condition as jurisdictional. . . . Bowles emphasized that this Court had long treated such 

conditions as jurisdictional, including in statutes 

other than § 2107, and specifically in statutes that 

predated the creation of the courts of appeals.

Id. at 168 (citations omitted).

Relying on Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U.S. 428 

(2011), which concerned the time limit for filings appeals 

to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, an Article I 

court, the dissent suggests that Bowles does not govern

“judicial review of administrative decisions.” Id. at 437. In 

Henderson, the Court held that the appeal period was not 

jurisdictional because of the “unique administrative 

scheme” that is “unusually protective of claimants.” Id. at

437–38 (internal quotation marks omitted). To be sure, 

Henderson initially distinguished Bowles on the ground 

that it “concerned an appeal from one court to another 

court [and t]he ‘century’s worth of precedent and practice 

in American courts’ on which Bowles relied involved 

appeals of that type.” Id. at 436 (quoting Bowles, 551 U.S. 

at 209–10). But the Court went on to discuss at length 

judicial review of administrative agencies, citing to Stone 

v. INS, 514 U.S. 386, 405 (1995), which held that the 

deadline for seeking judicial review of final removal 

orders by the Board of Immigration Appeals is jurisdictional. The Henderson Court also noted that lower courts 

uniformly treat the time limit for review of certain final 

agency decisions under the Hobbs Act as jurisdictional. 

Henderson, 562 U.S. at 437. The Court eventually concluded that none of its prior cases required that the 

appeal period from the Veterans Administration to an 

Article I court be jurisdictional since “[a]ll of those cases 

involved review by Article III courts.” Id. (emphasis addCase: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 5 Filed: 02/16/2017
6 FEDORA v. MSPB

ed). The Henderson Court thus made clear that appeal

periods to Article III courts are jurisdictional.

Since this case concerns the timeliness of Fedora’s appeal to this court, an Article III court, Bowles—not Henderson—is the governing authority. Accordingly, this 

court lacks jurisdiction over petitions for review that fail 

to comply with the requirements of § 7703(b)(1)(A).

As the Supreme Court also made clear in Bowles, the 

jurisdictional nature of the timeliness requirement precludes equitable exceptions. 551 U.S. at 213–14. Our own 

prior decisions have likewise held that § 7703(b)(1) is not 

subject to equitable tolling. Oja, 405 F.3d at 1357–60; see 

also Marandola v. United States, 518 F.3d 913, 914–15 

(Fed. Cir. 2008) (holding that the filing requirements of 

28 U.S.C. § 2107(b), Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B), and R. Fed. 

Cl. 58.1 are “mandatory and jurisdictional” and cannot be 

waived or equitably tolled).

II

A prior version of § 7703(b)(1) provided that “any petition for review must be filed within 60 days after the date 

the petitioner received notice of the final order or decision 

of the Board.” See 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1) (1998) (emphasis 

added). But, in 2012, this provision was amended to 

require “fil[ing] within 60 days after the Board issues 

notice of the final order or decision of the Board.” Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012, Pub. L. No. 

112-199, § 108(a), 126 Stat. 1465, 1469 (2012) (emphasis 

added). By its plain terms, § 7703(b)(1)(A) as amended 

begins the 60-day clock on the date the Board issues 

notice of its final order, not the date the petitioner receives notice of that decision. Here, notice of the final 

decision was issued on August 15, 2014. This court did not 

receive the petition until October 20, 2014, 6 days after 

the 60-day period had run.

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FEDORA v. MSPB 7

III

Mr. Fedora thus failed to timely file his petition for 

review within the 60-day period required by

§ 7703(b)(1)(A). Under § 7703(b)(1)(A) Mr. Fedora was 

required to file his petition for review “within 60 days 

after” August 15, 2014—i.e., by October 14, 2014. Since 

filing requires actual receipt by the court, not just timely 

mailing, see Pinat v. Office of Pers. Mgmt., 931 F.2d 1544, 

1546 (Fed. Cir. 1991); Fed. R. App. P. 25(a)(2)(A), Mr. 

Fedora missed the October 14, 2014 filing deadline.2

Mr. Fedora points out that the Board’s final order directed him to this court’s “Guide for Pro Se Petitioners 

and Appellants,” which incorrectly instructed that a 

petitioner “may file a petition for review in this court 

within 60 days of receipt of the Board’s decision.” App. 5.

Mr. Fedora claims to have relied on this guidance in filing 

his petition for review. But as previously stated, we do not 

have the authority to equitably toll the filing requirements of § 7703(b)(1)(A). See Bowles, 551 U.S. at 213–14; 

Oja, 405 F.3d at 1357–60. Moreover, the Board’s final 

order gave notice to Mr. Fedora regarding his rights for 

further review and specifically stated that the 60-day

period would begin on the date the final order was issued. 

It imparted the importance of the filing deadline, cautioning to “be very careful to file on time” since the “court 

must receive [the] request for review no later than 60 

calendar days after the date of [the] order.” App. 36 (citing 

5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1)(A) and noting the revision effective 

December 27, 2012). Unfortunately for Mr. Fedora, he 

failed to follow these instructions and missed the October 

14, 2014 deadline.

 

2 The fact that Mr. Fedora mailed his petition on 

October 11, 2014, within the 60-day period, is irrelevant 

since the court did not receive it until October 20, 2014.

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8 FEDORA v. MSPB

DISMISSED

COSTS

No costs.

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United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

LAURENCE M. FEDORA,

Petitioner

v.

MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD,

Respondent

UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE,

Intervenor

______________________ 

2015-3039

______________________ 

Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection 

Board in No. SF-0752-13-0433-I-1.

______________________ 

PLAGER, Circuit Judge, dissenting. 

In the case before us, the majority, having labelled the 

time bar “mandatory and jurisdictional,” proceeded to rule 

that “this court lacks jurisdiction over petitions for review 

that fail to comply with the [statutory deadline for filing].” 

Because that conclusion does not do justice to the complexities of the issue Mr. Fedora presents, is inconsistent 

with current Supreme Court guidance, and in my view 

probably results in a wrong conclusion that is based 

neither on good law nor fundamental fairness, I respectfully dissent.

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2 FEDORA v. MSPB

1.

Mr. Fedora asks this court to review a decision of the 

Merit Systems Protection Board (“MSPB” or “Board”). In 

that decision, the MSPB affirmed a determination by its 

administrative judge that Mr. Fedora had failed to state a 

Board-reviewable claim of involuntary, i.e., forced, retirement from the Postal Service, and that therefore the 

MSPB could not help him. Upon receipt of the Board’s 

order, Mr. Fedora’s attempt to appeal to this court for 

review of that decision ran into two procedural hurdles. 

First, by fully following the official printed instructions, 

provided by this appellate court, regarding filing deadlines, he missed the statutory deadline for filing his 

petition for review by several days—the instructions were 

in error. Second, by using the Postal Service to send in 

his petition as our procedures authorize, his former 

employer, in a bit of irony, apparently delivered his 

petition to the court in Washington after an unexplained 

delay—it was stamped received by this court nine days 

after it was mailed from Portland. As a result, his appeal 

petition was considered received six days late. The question is whether there is anything that can be done about 

the fact of his late filing, which would otherwise preclude 

his appeal.

Citing a 1984 decision of this court, Monzo v. Department of Transportation, 735 F.2d 1335 (Fed. Cir. 1984), 

the majority decides this case by invoking the old shibboleth that the time bar is “mandatory [and] jurisdictional.” 

As the Supreme Court itself has recently emphasized, see 

the discussion below, the term “jurisdiction” is one of the 

most misused and ambiguous terms in the legal vocabulary. 

When used correctly, the term “jurisdiction,” for example when used in the phrase “subject-matter jurisdiction,” refers to a well-understood characteristic of judicial 

process: the authority of a court to exercise judicial power 

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FEDORA v. MSPB 3

over a case before it. To illustrate: by statute this court 

has subject-matter jurisdiction to review final decisions 

rendered by the Board. See 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9) (“The 

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 

shall have exclusive jurisdiction—(9) of an appeal from a 

final order or final decision of the Merit Systems Protection Board, pursuant to sections 7703(b)(1) and 7703(d) of 

title 5 . . . .”).1 Indeed, our subject-matter jurisdiction 

over this class of decisions is exclusive—no other court of 

appeals may hear and decide these appeals. 

When used in other contexts, the term “jurisdiction” 

can be used as a conclusory label to support a result, often 

with little if any analysis. An example is the lead case the 

majority cites as authority for the outcome in this case. 

Monzo, like this case, involved a petition for review of an 

MSPB decision adverse to the petitioner. The statute at 

issue provided that any petition for review “must be filed 

within 30 days after the date the petitioner received 

notice of the final order or decision of the Board.” 5 

U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1) (1982). The evidence in the case 

indicated that petitioner received notice of the decision on 

October 11, 1983, and his attorney received it on October 

14. The petition for review was received by the court on 

November 14. The court held that the date the attorney 

received notice was irrelevant; the statute refers only to 

the petitioner. The court in a one paragraph Order announced that “[t]he 30-day period for appeal is statutory, 

mandatory, jurisdictional, and bars the claim here.” 735 

F.2d at 1336.

 

1 Another necessary ingredient for the exercise of 

judicial power in a given case is personal jurisdiction over 

the parties. This involves quite different considerations 

from those affecting subject-matter jurisdiction, and is not 

at issue in this case. See, e.g., Daimler AG v. Bauman, 

134 S. Ct. 746 (2014). 

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4 FEDORA v. MSPB

The only explanation offered for that conclusion was a 

cite to Ramos v. United States, 683 F.2d 396 (Ct. Cl. 

1982), in which the Claims Court held that receipt by 

petitioner’s wife of the decision of the Board constituted 

notice to petitioner within the meaning of the statute. 

The Ramos majority emphasized that “statutes of limitations” are a condition on the sovereign’s consent to suit, 

and must be strictly construed. The concurring judge 

suggested he would not construe the statute so strictly if 

given “any reasonable handle for doing so,” but since Mr. 

Ramos did not offer one, he concluded his only alternative 

was “a weary shrug and a turn aside to more agreeable 

objects of contemplation.” Id. at 399.

The second case on which the majority bases its result 

here is the more recent case of Oja v. Department of the 

Army, 405 F.3d 1349 (Fed. Cir. 2005). Mr. Oja sought 

enforcement by the MSPB of a settlement agreement he 

had with the Army Corps of Engineers, the outcome of a 

contentious dispute involving his performance and subsequent removal from his office in the Corps. The Federal 

Circuit’s opinion is considerably more detailed than 

Monzo; as the opinion noted, the case came to this court 

by way of “a tangled procedural path—first to the MSPB, 

then to the EEOC, then to the district court, and now to 

this court.” Id. at 1354. 

The opinion discusses at length a number of issues 

raised by this ‘tangled procedural path,’ but for purposes 

of our case here, the only relevant point is that the Oja

majority concluded that, “even if . . . the filing limit of 

section 7703(b)(2) [is] subject to equitable tolling, an issue 

we need not decide, [that] . . . does not likewise affect 

section 7703(b)(1) and does not change this court’s binding holding in Monzo that section 7703(b)(1) is not subject 

to equitable tolling.” Id. at 1361. The court then dismissed the appeal for “lack of jurisdiction.” Id. (I note in 

passing that Oja was decided before any of the Supreme 

Court’s later opinions discussed below.)

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FEDORA v. MSPB 5

Oja’s reliance on Monzo for the proposition that the 

statute at issue is not “subject to equitable tolling” is 

curious, since the words “equitable tolling” do not appear 

in the Monzo opinion; its legal point was limited to the 

statement that the statute was “mandatory [and] jurisdictional.” Which raises the interesting question—what is 

the relationship between jurisdiction and equitable tolling?

2. 

The answer to that question is that these are two separate and distinct legal issues. Subject-matter jurisdiction is granted by Congress to courts it creates under 

Article III of the Constitution, pursuant to Congress’s 

Constitutional powers.2 Subject-matter jurisdiction 

describes the kinds of disputes a particular court is empowered to decide. Constitutionally, if a court lacks 

subject-matter jurisdiction over a case, the court is without power to grant any remedy, no matter how warranted; 

that necessarily includes equitable tolling of a statutory 

deadline.3

 

2 This statement is strictly true only for the lower 

federal courts, the district and appellate courts created by 

congressional act. With the exception of the Supreme 

Court, federal courts, both trial and appeal, are dependent on congressional authorization for their structure and 

subject-matter jurisdiction. The Supreme Court, established by the Constitution itself, has assigned to it by the 

Constitution certain exclusive subject-matter areas. See 

generally U.S. Const. art. III.

3 In the felicitous phrasing of Justice Breyer, concurring in Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 

523 U.S. 83, 111 (1998), determining a court’s subjectmatter jurisdiction at the outset of a case “helps better to 

restrict the use of the federal courts to those adversarial 

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6 FEDORA v. MSPB

Assuming, however, that a court has subject-matter 

jurisdiction over the cause, the question of whether a 

statutory condition, such as a time bar, is “jurisdictional,” 

and thus determinative of eligibility for equitable tolling 

of an otherwise apparently mandatory deadline, is a 

question the Supreme Court’s cases have wrestled with in 

the last decade or so. And this is a question on which I 

find the majority demonstrates insufficient understanding 

of these recent cases from the Supreme Court.

As the comment from the Ramos case, supra, indicated, at an earlier time the general view espoused by the 

Supreme Court among others was that if Congress imposed a statutory deadline for seeking judicial relief, 

Congress intended that deadline to be strictly enforced. 

Hence the almost religious repetition in the early cases of 

the phrase about “mandatory and jurisdictional.” 

“Jurisdictional” in that context did not mean that the 

court somehow lost subject-matter jurisdiction, i.e., the 

authority to decide the kind of dispute at issue. Instead, 

it was a shorthand way of saying that the court had had 

its power to adjudicate this particular case withdrawn, 

because Congress intended that the adjudicative power be 

withdrawn when the time-filing requirement was not met. 

That was then; then came Irwin.

In 1990, Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs4

turned the law of “mandatory and jurisdictional” and its 

concomitant equitable tolling doctrine on its head, or so it 

was thought. Shirley Irwin was fired from his job with 

the Veterans Administration. Pursuant to the Civil 

Rights Act of 19645 (“the Act”), he first sought help from 

 

disputes that Article III defines as the federal judiciary’s 

business.”

4 498 U.S. 89 (1990).

5 Pub. L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241 (1964), as amended.

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FEDORA v. MSPB 7

the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 

(“EEOC”), alleging an unlawful discharge based on race 

and disability. After getting a letter from the EEOC 

affirming his dismissal, he filed a complaint in the district 

court, as provided by the Act. However, his complaint 

was not filed within 30 days of the EEOC’s decision, 

which was the time deadline stated in the Act. 

At the Government’s urging, the district court held it 

was without jurisdiction, a holding affirmed by the Fifth 

Circuit Court of Appeals. Id. at 91. The court of appeals 

reasoned that the 30-day period operated as an absolute 

jurisdictional limit, and that the district court could not 

excuse Irwin’s late filing because federal courts lacked 

“jurisdiction” over his untimely claim. Id.

The Supreme Court reversed. The Court first recited, 

with due citation, the traditional doctrine that congressional waivers of sovereign immunity (the doctrine, inherited from the Kings of England, that the sovereign, here 

the Federal Government, generally is immune from suit 

for its wrongful acts) must be strictly construed, and that 

a waiver of sovereign immunity cannot be implied but 

must be unequivocally expressed. 

But then the Court announced that, once Congress 

has made such a waiver—presumably by granting federal 

courts subject-matter jurisdiction over a particular class 

of cases against the Government—the question of equitable tolling applicable to statutory time bars in a given 

case would be decided “in the same way that it is applicable to private suits . . . . We therefore hold that the same 

rebuttable presumption of equitable tolling applicable to 

suits against private defendants should also apply to suits 

against the United States.” Id. at 95.

Irwin was thus understood to say that once Congress 

authorized a suit against the Federal Government in a 

particular subject-matter area, the statutory conditions 

placed on that suit in the form of a time bar in which suit 

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8 FEDORA v. MSPB

must be filed were to be presumed to be subject to equitable relief for the same reasons they would be in private 

litigation. Thus, unless Congress specifically indicated 

otherwise, such time limits were no longer to be considered “jurisdictional,” that is, intended by Congress to be 

automatic and unwaivable withdrawals of a court’s power 

to adjudicate. 

Two issues have emerged in the cases, discussed next, 

following Irwin—first, has Congress expressed a clear 

intention to make a stated condition in a suit against the 

Government—such as the time within which a plaintiff 

must file the suit in court—a bar to a court’s exercise of 

power over a particular case, i.e., a “jurisdictional” bar? If 

not, the Irwin presumption is not rebutted, and the stated 

condition or bar is subject to equitable relief.

Second, assuming the condition is one subject to equitable relief, is such relief available for a particular plaintiff in the particular case? That depends on the particular 

facts. For example, in the Irwin case itself, this reversal 

of long-standing doctrine dealing with ‘jurisdiction’ did 

not help Mr. Irwin. The Court explained that federal 

courts “have typically extended equitable relief only 

sparingly,” and gave illustrations: a plaintiff who diligently pursued his remedies by filing within the time limit, 

but filed a defective pleading; and a complainant who “has 

been induced or tricked by his adversary’s misconduct 

into allowing the filing deadline to pass.” Id. at 90.6 

Concluding that Mr. Irwin’s failure to file timely because his lawyer was away was “at best a garden variety 

claim of excusable neglect,” it was not entitled to equita-

 

6 See Bailey v. West, 160 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir. 1998) 

(en banc) for a discussion of factors entitling a petitioner 

to equitable tolling. 

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FEDORA v. MSPB 9

ble intervention. Id. at 96. The judgment of the court of 

appeals was affirmed. Id.

Since the Irwin decision, the Supreme Court, as well 

as the lower courts, have wrestled primarily with the first 

of these two questions: in a given statutory setting, has 

Congress somehow expressed a clear enough intention to 

make the failure to comply with a condition to judicial 

relief against the Government’s conduct, such as a filing 

deadline, an absolute bar? To put it in terms applicable 

here, has the “rebuttable presumption of equitable tolling” 

of the time bar in this case been rebutted by a clear

congressional expression of its intention to the contrary? 

In reality, Congress is not known to address this issue 

in the specific terms of jurisdictional bar vs. equitable 

relief. The resolution of the issue has become one of 

construing the phrases in which the condition, the time 

bar for example, is expressed. This may be seen in such 

indicators as where in a complex of statutory provisions 

the bar appears vis-à-vis where the court’s basic subjectmatter authorization appears, how the particular bar is 

stated, and even how often a court has addressed the 

issue without congressional reaction. 

The Supreme Court’s recent cases, despite Irwin’s

stated desire to no longer decide these cases in an ad hoc

manner but rather to “adopt a more general rule to govern the applicability of equitable tolling suits against the 

Government,” id. at 95, have flipped back and forth based 

on the various factors the particular opinion seemed to 

consider relevant.

3. 

The question of jurisdictional vs. nonjurisdictional 

statutory conditions to judicial relief has come before the 

Supreme Court in both time bar and other statutory 

contexts. Arbaugh v. Y&H Corp., 546 U.S. 500 (2006)

raised a somewhat different bar, in that the condition at 

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10 FEDORA v. MSPB

issue was not a time-bar regarding filing of an appeal, but 

rather a condition on whether the statute at issue was 

applicable to the defendant employer. The case arose 

under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the “Act”). 

The Act required that an employer subject to the Act have 

15 or more employees. The defendant had not raised the 

issue of whether the employer had the requisite number 

of employees—and when later raised there was a disputed 

question regarding the issue—until the case was on 

appeal. If the issue was simply an element in the plaintiff’s claim for relief, the employer’s attempt to raise the 

issue as a defense at the appellate stages of the case 

would be barred. See Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 12(h)(2) (an 

objection under Rule 12(b)(6) may not be asserted posttrial). On the other hand, if the numerosity requirement 

went to the court’s real “jurisdiction,” that would be an 

issue that is not too late to raise on appeal, see Fed. R.

Civ. P. 12(h)(3), and indeed since it went to the court’s 

power to decide the case, it is one the court must attend to 

even if the parties do not. Arbaugh, 546 U.S. at 514.

The Court recapped the newer thinking about jurisdiction. Justice Ginsburg, writing for a unanimous court, 

said: “‘Jurisdiction,’ this Court has observed, ‘is a word of 

many, too many meanings.’ This Court, no less than 

other courts, has sometimes been profligate in its use of

the term. For example, this Court and others have occasionally described a nonextendable time limit as ‘mandatory and jurisdictional.’ But in recent decisions, we have 

clarified that time prescriptions, however emphatic, ‘are 

not properly typed “jurisdictional.”’” Id. at 510 (citations 

omitted). 

The Court described contrary decisions as “unrefined 

dispositions,” “‘drive-by jurisdictional rulings’” that 

“should be accorded ‘no precedential effect’ on the question whether the federal court had authority to adjudicate 

the claim in suit.” Id. at 511 (quoting Steel Co., 523 U.S. 

at 91). The Court acknowledged that Congress could have 

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 18 Filed: 02/16/2017
FEDORA v. MSPB 11

made the employee-numerosity requirement “jurisdictional,” but noted that “the 15-employee threshold appears in a separate provision that ‘does not speak in 

jurisdictional terms or refer in any way to the jurisdiction 

of the district courts.’” Id. at 515 (citation omitted). The 

Court held the numerosity provision to be an element of a 

plaintiff’s claim for relief, not a jurisdictional issue.

In Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205 (2007), decided but 

a year after Arbaugh, the Court came to the opposite 

conclusion. Bowles arose in a murder case, involving the 

late filing of an appeal from an adverse district court 

decision in a habeas appeal. An attempt had been made 

to extend the defendant’s time for appeal pursuant to 

court rule, but the filing did not comply with the time 

limit provided in the statute on which the rule was based. 

The court of appeals held that it lacked jurisdiction to 

hear the case, holding that the provision allowing a 

district court to extend the filing period for fourteen days 

for reopening of a case was “jurisdictional.”

The Supreme Court affirmed, in an opinion that 

seemed to refute Irwin and Arbaugh. Justice Thomas, 

writing for a five Justice majority, stated that, “Although 

several of our recent decisions have undertaken to clarify 

the distinction between claims-processing rules and 

jurisdictional rules, none of them calls into question our 

longstanding treatment of statutory time limits for taking 

an appeal as jurisdictional.” Id. at 210. The Irwin presumption was not mentioned or considered; Arbaugh was 

distinguished: “Nor do[es] Arbaugh . . . aid petitioner. In 

Arbaugh, the statutory limitation was an employeenumerosity requirement, not a time limit.” Id. at 211 

(citations omitted). The court of appeals was affirmed. 

The stark contrast between the approach taken in Arbaugh and that in Bowles did not remain unaddressed 

very long. Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154 

(2010), decided the following year, turned on a somewhat 

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12 FEDORA v. MSPB

arcane issue—whether a provision of the Copyright Act 

regarding registration precluded appeal in a case arising 

from claims of infringement of unregistered works. In 

terms relevant here, the issue was whether the requirements of the statute were to be treated as “jurisdictional,” 

and thus a bar to the appeal. The Court stated the question as “whether § 411(a) ‘clearly states’ that its registration requirement is ‘jurisdictional.’” Id. at 163 (quoting

Arbaugh, 559 U.S. at 515). The Court answered, “It does 

not.” Id. 

The Court then explained its decision in Bowles: 

“Bowles did not hold that any statutory condition devoid 

of an express jurisdictional label should be treated as 

jurisdictional simply because courts have long treated it 

as such. Nor did it hold that all statutory conditions 

imposing a time limit should be considered jurisdictional. 

Rather, Bowles stands for the proposition that context, 

including this Court’s interpretation of similar provisions 

in many years past, is relevant to whether a statute ranks 

a requirement as jurisdictional.” Id. at 167–68. The court 

of appeals was reversed; the statutory provision was held 

nonjurisdictional. It is worth noting that Reed Elsevier, 

with its explanation of Bowles, was written by the same 

justice who authored Bowles. 

In an opinion concurring in part, Justice Ginsburg, 

the authoring Justice in Arbaugh, offered a further explanation: “Bowles and Arbaugh can be reconciled without 

distorting either decision, however, on the ground that 

Bowles rel[ied] on a long line of this Court’s decisions left 

undisturbed by Congress.” Id. at 173.

Subsequently, in Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U.S. 428 

(2011), the Court addressed directly a statutory time bar 

on review from this court. The case involved an appeal 

from the Board of Veterans Appeals to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Affairs. To appeal to the Veterans 

Court, the appellant must file a notice of appeal with the 

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 20 Filed: 02/16/2017
FEDORA v. MSPB 13

court within 120 days after the date when the Board’s 

final decision is mailed. 38 U.S.C. § 7266(a). As the 

Supreme Court saw it, “[t]he case presents the question 

whether a veteran’s failure to file a notice of appeal 

within the 120-day period should be regarded as having 

‘jurisdictional’ consequences.” Id. at 431. This court had 

held that it should be so regarded; the Supreme Court 

replied: “We hold that it should not.” Id.

The Court explained: “The question here . . . is whether Congress mandated that the 120-day deadline be 

‘jurisdictional.’ In Arbaugh, we applied a ‘readily administrable bright line’ rule for deciding such questions. 

Under Arbaugh, we look to see if there is any ‘clear’ 

indication that Congress wanted the rule to be ‘jurisdictional.’ This approach is suited to capture Congress’ 

likely intent and also provides helpful guidance for courts 

and litigants, who will be ‘duly instructed’ regarding a 

rule’s nature.” Id. at 435–36 (citations omitted). 

The Court then took note of the Government’s argument that Bowles meant that all statutory deadlines for 

taking appeals in civil cases are jurisdictional, and since 

this is a civil case, the 120-day rule is jurisdictional. 

Replied the Court: “We reject the major premise of this 

syllogism. Bowles did not hold categorically that every 

deadline for seeking review in civil litigation is jurisdictional. Instead, Bowles concerned an appeal from one 

court to another court. The ‘century’s worth of precedent 

and practice in American courts’ on which Bowles relied 

involved appeals of that type.” Id. at 436. 

In response to the Government’s argument that 

Bowles’ reasoning nevertheless should be applied to 

judicial review of administrative decisions generally, the 

Court rejected the comparison to mine-run Hobbs Act 

cases, instead analogizing veterans’ cases to Social Security disability benefits cases, both involving special adCase: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 21 Filed: 02/16/2017
14 FEDORA v. MSPB

ministrative procedures and both being ‘unusually protective’ to claimants.

Finally, the Court noted that the deadline-stating 

provision does not speak in jurisdictional terms or refer in 

any way to the jurisdiction of the Veterans Court. It 

contrasted the deadline-stating provision for appeals from 

the Veterans Court to this court, which is cast in the same 

language as the provision for appeals from the district 

courts to the courts of appeal, the latter having long been 

held ‘jurisdictional.’ The Court stated that if Congress 

intended the same result, it could have stated the provision in the same terms. The Court concluded that “we do 

not find any clear indication that the 120-day limit was 

intended to carry the harsh consequences that accompany 

the jurisdiction tag.” Id. at 441. The case was remanded 

to the Federal Circuit to determine whether it falls within 

any exception that calls for equitable tolling.7

An even more recent Supreme Court decision, again 

dealing with a time bar, must be added to the mix. In 

United States v. Kwai Fun Wong, 135 S. Ct. 1625 (2015), 

the issue was whether the statute for filing a claim under 

the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), was 

subject to tolling. The statute had two specified deadlines, one for notifying the appropriate federal agency of 

the claim—a two year time limit—and the other—a six 

month limit—for filing the claim in court if the agency 

made a negative decision on the claim.

 

7 On remand, this court vacated the Veterans 

Court’s decision and remanded. The Veterans Court 

appears to have dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because 

Mr. Henderson had died while his appeal was pending 

before the Supreme Court and no one sought to be substituted before the Veterans Court.

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 22 Filed: 02/16/2017
FEDORA v. MSPB 15

Two cases were consolidated for Supreme Court review; in each of the cases the claimant missed one of the 

deadlines. The provisions had one thing in common—the 

statute was written to say that a tort claim against the 

United States “shall be forever barred” unless the deadlines are complied with. The Government argued that the 

time limits are not subject to tolling as they clearly are 

intended to be jurisdictional restrictions. However, on 

appeal to the Ninth Circuit, the court of appeals held that 

tolling was available in both cases.

In a split decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the 

court of appeals. Unlike all of the cases since Irwin

reviewed above, this time the Court began with a discussion of Irwin. Irwin, said the Court, “sets out the framework for deciding ‘the applicability of equitable tolling in 

suits against the Government.’ In Irwin, we recognized 

that time bars in suits between private parties are presumptively subject to equitable tolling. That means a 

court usually may pause the running of a limitations 

statute in private litigation when a party ‘has pursued his 

rights diligently but some extraordinary circumstance’ 

prevents him from meeting a deadline. We held in Irwin

that ‘the same rebuttable presumption of equitable tolling’ should also apply to suits brought against the United 

States under a statute waiving sovereign immunity.” Id.

at 1630–31 (citations omitted).

The Court added, “the Government must clear a high 

bar to establish that a statute of limitations is jurisdictional. In recent years, we have repeatedly held that 

procedural rules, including time bars, cabin a court’s 

power only if Congress has ‘clearly state[d]’ as much. 

. . . And in applying that clear statement rule, we have 

made plain that most time bars are nonjurisdictional. 

Time and again, we have described filing deadlines as 

‘quintessentially claim-processing rules,’ which ‘seek to 

promote the orderly progress of litigation,’ but do not 

deprive a court of authority to hear a case. [citing, inter 

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 23 Filed: 02/16/2017
16 FEDORA v. MSPB

alia, Henderson v. Shinseki] . . . Congress must do something special, beyond setting an exception-free deadline, 

to tag a statute of limitations as jurisdictional and so 

prohibit a court from tolling it.” Id. at 1632–33 (citations 

omitted). 

After exhaustively reviewing other time bars, including those with phrases like “shall be forever barred,” the 

Court concluded that the time bar applicable to these

cases contained simply “mundane statute-of-limitations 

language,” and that “neither this Court nor any other has 

accorded those words talismanic power to render time 

bars jurisdictional.” Id. at 1634. In effect, because Irwin

said so. There was a strong dissent, which argued that 

“[t]he statutory text, its historical roots, and more than a 

century of precedents show that this absolute bar is not 

subject to equitable tolling.” Id. at 1639. 

4. 

I appreciate that this court’s precedents, starting with 

Monzo back in 1984, support the outcome reached by the 

majority, and provide an easy pathway to the conclusion 

they reach. I also appreciate that an uncritical reading of 

the Supreme Court’s opinion in Bowles supports that 

conclusion. But there is now a more nuanced understanding of the Bowles opinion, by the same authoring Justice

writing in Reed Elsevier: “[n]or did [Bowles] hold that all 

statutory conditions imposing a time limit should be 

considered jurisdictional.” 559 U.S. at 167. Add to this 

the Court’s most recent case, in which a time bar designated by Congress as one in which a non-complying suit

“shall be forever barred.” The Court held it not a bar to 

equitable tolling. Kwai Fun Wong, 135 S. Ct. at 1634. 

In my view, the totality of the Supreme Court’s recent 

cases add up to a significant rethinking of the “jurisdictional” bar to equitable tolling. Attempts to distinguish 

among the Court’s opinions, on the basis that only some 

dealt with time bars while others required that different 

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 24 Filed: 02/16/2017
FEDORA v. MSPB 17

statutory conditions be met, is misguided. The basic issue 

is the same, and the Court itself did not make such background differences the controlling distinctions.

Rather, the Court examined the statutory context, 

looking for a clear indication that Congress intended that 

the Irwin presumption of the availability of equitable 

tolling should be considered rebutted. That is why in 

addressing the jurisdictional question, among other 

things, the Court asked about whether the statutory 

requirement “speak[s] in jurisdictional terms,” Arbaugh, 

546 U.S. at 515; whether the cases at issue are longstanding and left undisturbed by Congress, see the concurring opinion in Reed Elsevier, 559 U.S. at 173; and 

whether the case involves a time bar from one court to 

another (more likely to be seen as “jurisdictional”) or 

whether it is from an administrative agency to a court, 

the latter possibly reflecting a program “‘unusually protective’ of claimants,” Henderson, 562 U.S. at 436 (citation 

omitted). 

Given this backdrop, how should the case before this 

court be decided? To do justice to Mr. Fedora’s case, at a 

minimum the time bar has to be examined to determine 

whether Congress has, in some clear manner, rebutted 

the presumption of the availability of equitable tolling. 

The burden has been placed on the Government to convince the court that Congress intended that the rebuttable presumption is rebutted.

Finding congressional intent to rebut the presumption 

simply because the time bar is stated in a statute is no

longer appropriate. Even the author of Bowles seems to 

have retreated from that proposition. What additional 

considerations will persuade that the presumption has or 

has not been rebutted depends on the context of a particular statute. Taking into consideration the criteria suggested in the Court’s opinions, as outlined above, Mr. 

Fedora presents a substantial case for the availability of 

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 25 Filed: 02/16/2017
18 FEDORA v. MSPB

equitable relief—nothing in § 7703(b)(1)(A) speaks in 

jurisdictional terms, there is no long-standing line of 

decisions on MSPB appeals to this court that suggests 

congressional acquiescence, and this is an appeal from an 

administrative agency to a court, with considerable support for the proposition that MSPB proceedings are intended to be specially protective of claimants.8

But we should not rush to judgment. The case came 

to us as a pro se filing with only an informal brief of 

petitioner, and no oral argument. Neither the Government in its Respondent’s brief nor the Intervenor, USPS, 

in its brief did more than repeat the “mandatory and 

jurisdictional” chant in support of their argument that we 

are without “jurisdiction” over Mr. Fedora’s appeal 

because his filing was untimely. 

Because of the significance of this issue, and because 

our court’s precedents have not recognized the current 

state of Supreme Court law on the subject, a thorough 

examination with competent opposing counsel is called 

for. The case should be rebriefed before an en banc court 

on the timeliness filing question, with assigned counsel 

for Mr. Fedora, and an opportunity for the Government 

and Intervenor to address the question of whether there is 

any basis for a finding that the presumption under Irwin

of equitable tolling regarding the bar in § 7703(b)(1)(A) 

has been rebutted. 

The Government, in the words of the Supreme Court, 

“must clear a high bar to establish that a statute of limitations is jurisdictional,” Kwai Fun Wong, 135 S. Ct. at 

1632. Because the petitioner was pro se, the Government 

 

8 See, e.g., 5 U.S.C. § 2301(b)(8) (under governing 

merit system principles, employees must be “protected 

against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion 

for partisan purposes”).

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 26 Filed: 02/16/2017
FEDORA v. MSPB 19

may not have appreciated the situation in which this case 

puts it. I respect the argument that the Government has 

had its day in court, and obviously failed to make its case, 

but in the interest of fairness I favor giving the Government an opportunity to attempt to clear that high bar. A 

well-argued case, with competent counsel on both sides, 

will help this court come to a correct conclusion regarding 

the law of the case, a conclusion giving full attention and 

respect to the opinions of the Supreme Court.

Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from any contrary 

disposition of this appeal.

Case: 15-3039 Document: 55-2 Page: 27 Filed: 02/16/2017