Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-01052/USCOURTS-caDC-14-01052-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Federal Labor Relations Authority
Respondent
National Treasury Employees Union
Intervenor for Respondent
United States Department of Homeland Security
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 18, 2015 Decided May 5, 2015

No. 14-1052

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, US

CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION SCOBEY, MONTANA,

PETITIONER

v.

FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS AUTHORITY,

RESPONDENT

NATIONAL TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION,

INTERVENOR

On Petition for Review of an Order 

of the Federal Labor Relations Authority

Mark W. Pennak, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs was 

Leonard Schaitman, Attorney. Howard S. Scher, Attorney, 

entered an appearance.

Fred B. Jacob, Solicitor, Federal Labor Relations 

Authority, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the 

brief were Zachary R. Henige, Deputy Solicitor, and 

Stephanie J. Sverdrup Stone, Attorney.

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Paras N. Shah argued the cause for intervenor. With him 

on the brief were Gregory O’Duden and Larry J. Adkins.

Before: TATEL and MILLETT, Circuit Judges, and 

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

TATEL, Circuit Judge: Although the amount of money at 

issue in this dispute about overtime pay is small, the amount 

of energy that the parties have expended fighting over it is 

not. It has been the subject of arbitration, three Federal Labor 

Relations Authority decisions, and now this petition for 

review. It has taken three years and, according to the 

government, implicates the august constitutional principle of 

sovereign immunity. Notwithstanding all this time and effort, 

our task is easy.

We need not belabor the facts. The question presented is 

whether Customs and Border Protection must provide a 

border guard, whom an arbitrator found was wrongfully

denied an overtime opportunity in violation of Customs’

assignment policy, with monetary compensation under the 

Back Pay Act, 5 U.S.C. § 5596(b)(1) (authorizing back pay 

awards to employees “affected by an unjustified or 

unwarranted personnel action”), or merely the next available 

overtime opportunity pursuant to the agency’s assignment 

policy, see Revised National Inspectional Assignment Policy, 

Section B.6 (“The remedy for a missed overtime opportunity 

due to administrative error shall be provision of the next 

overtime opportunity to the affected employee.”). According 

to Customs, subsection (b)(4) of the Back Pay Act, which 

provides that “[t]he pay . . . under this section . . . shall not 

exceed that authorized by the applicable . . .

regulations . . . under which the unjustified or unwarranted 

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personnel action is found,” 5 U.S.C. § 5596(b)(4) (emphasis 

added), limits the guard’s remedy to the terms of its 

assignment policy. In a series of decisions, the Authority

rejected Customs’ reading of subsection (b)(4) and ruled that 

even if the Back Pay Act limits awards to the terms of the 

agency’s assignment policy, that policy was inapplicable in 

this case because it applies only in situations involving

“administrative error” and the arbitrator had concluded that 

the denial of overtime was “more than a mere mistake.” 

NTEU, Chapter 231 and U.S. Department of Homeland 

Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Scobey, 

Montana, 66 FLRA 1024 (Sep. 25, 2012) (internal quotation 

marks omitted); NTEU, Chapter 231 and U.S. Department of 

Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 

Scobey, Montana, 67 FLRA 67 (Dec. 12, 2012); NTEU, 

Chapter 231 and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. 

Customs and Border Protection, Scobey, Montana, 67 FLRA 

247 (Feb. 11, 2014). The Authority therefore awarded back 

pay, and Customs now petitions for review. The Authority

argues that we lack jurisdiction, and we agree.

Section 7123 of the Federal Service Labor-Management 

Relations Statute vests this court with jurisdiction to review

the Authority’s final orders “other than an order . . . involving 

an award by an arbitrator.” 5 U.S.C. § 7123(a)(1). As we 

explained in Griffith v. Federal Labor Relations Authority,

842 F.2d 487 (D.C. Cir. 1988), Congress imposed this 

limitation in order to protect “the features of the arbitral 

process that . . . Congress had in mind when it set up the 

scheme: finality, speed and economy.” Id. at 491. We have 

nonetheless exercised jurisdiction in a narrow category of 

arbitral cases. In Griffith, we held that though there was 

“unusually clear congressional intent generally to foreclose 

review” of “nonconstitutional claims . . . Congress’s language 

was not specific enough to foreclose review” of 

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“constitutional challenges.” Id. at 490. Then, in United States 

Department of Treasury, United States Customs Service v. 

Federal Labor Relations Authority, 43 F.3d 682 (D.C. Cir. 

1994), we added a second exception for cases where “the 

Authority exceeds its jurisdiction,” explaining that the 

Authority has jurisdiction only over statutes that were 

“fashioned for the purpose of regulating the working 

conditions of employees.” Id. at 691.

This case implicates neither exception. The Authority

applied a statute within its purview, the Back Pay Act, see 

Treasury, 43 F.3d at 689 (explaining that the Back Pay Act 

“undisputedly was designed to deal directly with employee 

working conditions”), and the case presents no constitutional 

question, as that statute waives sovereign immunity, see 5 

U.S.C. § 5596. Recognizing as much, Customs argues that 

when “the Authority has awarded back pay in violation of the 

Back Pay Act,” it “violat[es] . . . sovereign immunity” and the 

“order exceeds its jurisdiction and is thus reviewable under 

this Court’s decision in Treasury.” Petitioner’s Br. 15

(internal quotation marks omitted); see also id. at 24 

(grounding the same argument in the Appropriations Clause, 

U.S. Const. Art. I, § 9, cl. 7). This is incorrect. Routine 

statutory and regulatory questions—in this case, the meaning 

of the “shall not exceed” clause in the Back Pay Act and 

“administrative error” in Customs’ assignment policy—are 

not transformed into constitutional or jurisdictional issues 

merely because a statute waives sovereign immunity. 

Otherwise, Congress’s creation of a mostly unreviewable 

system of arbitration would be eviscerated, as every Authority 

decision involving an arbitral award arguably in excess of 

what the Back Pay Act authorizes would be reviewable. To 

make matters worse, as Customs concedes, Oral Arg. Rec. at 

1:09–2:05, this evisceration would be distinctly asymmetrical: 

when the Authority awards back pay, the government could 

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seek judicial review, but when the Authority denies back pay,

the employee would have no recourse because only decisions 

adverse to the government could implicate sovereign 

immunity. As we said of a similar argument in Treasury, 

“[t]hat seems to us to be a labored, even silly, construction of 

the statute.” Treasury, 43 F.3d at 688. 

Customs insists that this conclusion “has to be wrong, as 

it would mean that there could be no review over the 

Authority’s interpretation of the Back Pay Act no matter how 

extreme that application was and no matter how gigantic the 

liability imposed on the Treasury.” Petitioner’s Reply Br. 4

(internal quotation marks omitted). We have two responses. 

First, this is exactly what Congress intended. Section 7123’s 

plain language “removes [Authority] decisions reviewing 

arbitral awards from judicial review” unless “the 

[Authority’s] order ‘involves an unfair labor practice.’” 

Overseas Education Association v. Federal Labor Relations 

Authority, 824 F.2d 61, 63 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (quoting 5 U.S.C. 

§ 7123(a)); see also H.R. CONF. REP. NO. 1717, 95th Cong., 

2d sess. 153 (1978), U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1978 

at 2887 (“[T]here will be no judicial review of the Authority’s 

action on those arbitrators [sic] awards in grievance cases 

which are appealable to the Authority.”). Congress obviously 

believed that protecting the beneficial “features” of 

arbitration, supra at 3, was more important than providing for 

judicial review of every arbitral decision. See City of 

Arlington, Texas v. FCC, 133 S. Ct. 1863, 1868 (2013) 

(“Congress has the power (within limits) to tell the courts 

what classes of cases they may decide”). Second, this case

does not come close to raising the specter Customs fears. 

Involving just a night’s worth of overtime pay, the case turns 

on either “some marginal nuance of the Back Pay Act,” 

Griffith, 842 F.2d at 494, or a phrase in Customs’ assignment

policy. We thus have no need to decide whether any 

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alternative avenues of review might exist in the event the 

Authority egregiously misinterprets the Act.

For the foregoing reasons, we dismiss the petition.

So ordered.

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