Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-03095/USCOURTS-ca13-15-03095-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States Postal Service
Respondent
Joan M. Young
Petitioner

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

JOAN M. YOUNG,

Petitioner

v.

UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE,

Respondent

______________________ 

2015-3095

______________________ 

Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection 

Board in No. AT-0752-09-0177-C-2.

______________________ 

Decided: October 13, 2015

______________________ 

 JOAN M. YOUNG, Columbia, TN, pro se.

 MATTHEW PAUL ROCHE, Commercial Litigation 

Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of 

Justice, Washington, DC, for respondent. Also represented by REGINALD T. BLADES, JR., ROBERT E. KIRSCHMAN,

JR., BENJAMIN C. MIZER. 

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, WALLACH, and TARANTO,

Circuit Judges.

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2 YOUNG v. USPS

PER CURIAM. 

Joan Young worked as a rural mail carrier for the 

United States Postal Service. After the Postal Service 

placed her on enforced leave in 2008, she appealed to the

Merit Systems Protection Board, but the parties entered 

into a settlement agreement before the appeal was heard. 

In the agreement, Ms. Young promised to select a psychiatrist to examine her to determine whether she could 

return to work either in her previous capacity or as a 

clerk at a specified nearby post office. A dispute then 

arose about enforcing the agreement. In the current 

round of that dispute, Ms. Young has contended that the 

Postal Service would breach the agreement if it submitted 

certain questions to the psychiatrist, and the Postal 

Service has contended that Ms. Young was out of compliance with the agreement because she had not selected a 

psychiatrist for the required examination—actually for 

the required second examination, the Board having 

earlier found, agreeing with Ms. Young, that the first 

examination was flawed. The Board ruled that the Postal 

Service may submit the questions at issue to the psychiatrist and that Ms. Young, by not yet having chosen a 

psychiatrist for the (second) examination, was out of 

compliance with her obligations under the settlement 

agreement. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

The Postal Service employed Ms. Young as a rural 

mail carrier at a post office in Columbia, Tennessee. 

Effective November 21, 2008, the Postal Service placed 

her on leave from her position, stating that she was

unable to perform the duties of her regular assignment. 

Ms. Young appealed to the Board to challenge the enforced leave as a suspension of more than 14 days. See 5 

U.S.C. § 7512(2). Before any hearings took place, Ms. 

Young and the Postal Service entered into a settlement 

agreement. An administrative judge reviewed the agreeCase: 15-3095 Document: 29-2 Page: 2 Filed: 10/13/2015
YOUNG v. USPS 3

ment, accepted it into the record for enforcement purposes, and dismissed the appeal on April 2, 2009.

The settlement agreement provides as follows: The 

Postal Service will reinstate Ms. Young if a psychiatrist, 

following an independent examination of Ms. Young, 

states that she is able to return to her former position. If 

the psychiatrist concludes otherwise, Ms. Young will 

accept a position as a clerk in the post office at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, if such a position is available and she is 

able to do the job. Ms. Young may select a psychiatrist on 

her own, in which case she will pay the psychiatrist, or 

she may select a psychiatrist jointly with the Postal 

Service, in which case the Postal Service will pay.

Ms. Young chose the first option, and the selected 

psychiatrist evaluated her on April 15, 2009. On that 

date, the Postal Service faxed the psychiatrist a letter, 

asking him to analyze Ms. Young for specific medical 

conditions for which she had previously been treated or 

evaluated. The Postal Service attached various agency 

records, such as medical reports and information related 

to a worker’s compensation claim. The psychiatrist 

concluded that Ms. Young was not capable of returning to 

her position. Ms. Young then filed a petition for enforcement on May 14, 2009, claiming that the fax interfered 

with the independence of the medical evaluation.

The administrative judge, and the Board on review, 

interpreted the settlement agreement to permit the Postal 

Service to give the psychiatrist information about the 

requirements of Ms. Young’s job and the standards she 

must meet to be medically capable of returning to her 

position, but not to give the psychiatrist Ms. Young’s 

agency records. The Board ordered the Postal Service to 

allow Ms. Young to submit a new independent medical 

examination. Ms. Young appealed to this court, arguing 

that the Board had added a new term to the agreement by 

allowing the Postal Service to inform the examining

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4 YOUNG v. USPS

psychiatrist of the requirements of her former position, 

and we affirmed. Young v. USPS, 494 F. App’x 65, 67 

(Fed. Cir. 2012). 

On June 19, 2013, Ms. Young filed with the Board a 

petition for review of the four-year-old initial decision of 

the administrative judge (dated April 2, 2009) in which 

the judge had accepted the settlement agreement. In the 

petition for review, Ms. Young challenged the validity of 

the agreement. Her challenge centered on a contingency 

in the settlement agreement, which states that if a psychiatrist determines that she is unable to return to her 

original position and if the specified alternative position 

in Murfreesboro is still available at that time, she will 

accept the Murfreesboro position. The Board rejected the 

challenge on February 3, 2014, and denied the petition. It 

reasoned that the challenge was premature, because Ms. 

Young had yet to receive the agreement-required independent psychiatric evaluation, free of information the 

Board had earlier held the Postal Service must not provide to the psychiatrist, so that the contingency clause 

had not yet been triggered. 

The Postal Service not only had opposed Ms. Young’s 

petition for review but also had moved to enforce the 

agreement. The Board forwarded the motion for enforcement to the regional office for adjudication by an administrative judge. In addition, although Ms. Young had not 

formally filed a petition for enforcement, the Board determined from the record that she was in fact alleging 

that the Postal Service was not in compliance with the 

settlement agreement. Therefore, the Board forwarded 

those allegations to the regional office to be docketed with 

the forwarded Postal Service enforcement request as a 

cross-petition for enforcement.

In July 2014, an administrative judge addressed the 

cross-petitions for enforcement. Although Ms. Young 

continued to argue about the validity of the settlement 

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YOUNG v. USPS 5

agreement, the administrative judge interpreted her 

petition for enforcement to concern “the agency’s alleged 

intention to provide the examining psychiatrist with 

‘questions of such an outrageous, leading and biased

nature as to preclude any semblance of fairness in the 

examination.’ ” Young v. USPS, AT-0752-09-0177-C-2, 

2014 WL 3589700, at *2–3 (MSPB July 15, 2014). The 

Postal Service, for its part, claimed that Ms. Young had 

not yet complied with the settlement agreement because 

she had not selected a psychiatrist to conduct the 

(re)examination. 

The administrative judge denied Ms. Young’s petition 

and granted the agency’s. The administrative judge 

determined that the questions the agency planned to 

provide to the evaluating psychiatrist were proper, coming directly from the Postal Service’s fitness-for-duty 

instructions, which set out the current functional requirements for the position of Rural Carrier. Because 

those questions were “reasonably calculated to elicit 

information” necessary to determine whether Ms. Young 

may return to work, the administrative judge held that 

the agency’s transmittal of such questions would not 

breach the settlement agreement. Id. at *5. On the other 

hand, the administrative judge concluded, Ms. Young had 

not complied with the agreement because she neither 

selected a psychiatrist nor provided a valid excuse for her 

failure to do so. 

Ms. Young petitioned for review by the Board, which 

denied the petition and affirmed the administrative 

judge’s decision. Although Ms. Young restated her disagreement with the Board’s February 2014 decision finding 

her challenge to the settlement agreement to be premature, the Board noted that the February 2014 decision 

was final and concluded that Ms. Young had presented no 

basis to reconsider the final order.

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6 YOUNG v. USPS

Ms. Young appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 

U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9).

DISCUSSION

We must affirm the Board’s decision unless it is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not 

in accordance with the law; reached in violation of procedures required by law, rule, or regulation; or unsupported 

by substantial evidence. 5 U.S.C. § 7703(c); Addison v. 

Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 945 F.2d 1184, 1186 

(Fed. Cir. 1991). We find no basis for disturbing the 

Board’s decision.

Ms. Young makes numerous arguments regarding the 

validity of the settlement agreement, the subject of the 

Board’s February 2014 decision. But that decision, denying Ms. Young’s petition to review the April 2009 initial 

decision to accept the settlement agreement, was a final 

decision under 5 C.F.R. § 1201.113(b). Ms. Young had the 

opportunity to appeal the final decision to this court 

within sixty days. 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1)(A). She did not 

do so, and this court therefore may not consider her 

arguments. See Stoots v. Dep’t of Def., 273 F. App’x 941, 

944 (Fed. Cir. 2008); Monzo v. Dep’t of Transp., 735 F.2d 

1335, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 1984).

The only permissible subject of this appeal is the 

Board’s new enforcement decision, but we find no reversible error in that decision. Although Ms. Young contends 

that the settlement agreement does not allow any communication between the agency and psychiatrist, that

question was settled against Ms. Young by this court’s 

decision in Young, 494 F. App’x at 67, which affirmed the 

Board’s decision that “[t]he agency may communicate 

with the examining psychiatrist to the extent necessary to 

provide the job requirements and standards that the 

appellant must meet in order to be deemed medically 

capable of returning to her former position.” That ruling 

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YOUNG v. USPS 7

is binding here. See Morgan v. Dep’t of Energy, 424 F.3d 

1271, 1274 (Fed. Cir. 2005).

To the extent that Ms. Young more narrowly challenges the Board’s allowance of the particular questions 

the Postal Service proposes to transmit to the psychiatrist, we see no error in the Board’s determination that 

the settlement agreement permits those questions—which 

are “reasonably calculated to elicit information” about the 

subject of the agreement-required examination, namely, 

whether Ms. Young is capable of returning to her original 

position. J.A. 28. The proposed questions are drawn from 

the Postal Service’s fitness-for-duty examination, which 

the Postal Service uses “to determine whether or not an 

employee is medically able to perform his or her job 

responsibilities.” J.A. 89. As the administrative judge 

stated, the fitness-for-duty examination and the medical 

examination to which Ms. Young agreed are similar in 

purpose. Ms. Young makes no showing to the contrary.

We also find no error in the Board’s separate determination that Ms. Young is not in compliance with the 

settlement agreement because she has not selected a new 

forensic psychiatrist and undergone an independent 

medical (re)examination. Although Ms. Young argues

that she diligently searched for a psychiatrist and was in 

communication with the Postal Service about the examination before filing the June 2013 petition for review, 

there is no dispute that Ms. Young has not selected a 

psychiatrist since this court, in 2012, affirmed the Board’s 

decision ordering “the agency to allow [Ms. Young] to 

submit to a new independent medical examination.” J.A.

60; Young, 494 F. App’x at 68. Thus, the Board properly 

concluded that Ms. Young is in violation of the settlement 

agreement. 

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Board 

is affirmed.

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8 YOUNG v. USPS

No costs.

AFFIRMED

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