NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

MICHAEL R. REGIS,

Claimant-Appellant

v.

DENIS MCDONOUGH, SECRETARY OF 

VETERANS AFFAIRS,

Respondent-Appellee

______________________ 

2023-1299

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for 

Veterans Claims in No. 21-3469, Judge Amanda L. Meredith.

______________________ 

Decided: April 16, 2024

______________________ 

MICHAEL R. REGIS, Sacramento, CA, pro se.

 DANIEL BERTONI, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil 

Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also represented by 

BRIAN M. BOYNTON, ERIC P. BRUSKIN, PATRICIA M.

MCCARTHY; EVAN SCOTT GRANT, Y. KEN LEE, Office of General Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC. 

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2 REGIS v. MCDONOUGH

______________________ 

Before PROST, CHEN, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. 

Michael R. Regis appeals from a decision of the Court 

of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”) affirming the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (“Board”) decision to 

rate his service-connected bilateral-foot disability covered 

by diagnostic code 5276 at 30% for the effective period prior 

to May 11, 2015. Because this appeal does not present issues within our limited jurisdiction, we dismiss. 

BACKGROUND

Mr. Regis served honorably from 1983 to 2003. J.A. 20. 

At issue here is the Veterans Court’s decision related to the 

following aspects of an April 19, 2021, Board decision:

(1) the Board rated Mr. Regis’s bilateral-foot disability under diagnostic code 5276 (flatfoot) at 30% for the effective 

period prior to May 11, 2015; (2) it denied separate ratings 

under diagnostic code 5284 (foot injuries, other) for the flatfoot, plantar fasciitis, and Morton’s disease symptomology 

already rated under diagnostic code 5276; and (3) it instructed Mr. Regis to file either a VA Form 10182 or VA 

Form 9 to indicate which track he intended his “argument 

for an earlier effective date for the award of a total disability rating due to [unemployability] (TDIU)” to proceed on, 

but it did not adjudicate that claim. J.A. 22–23.1 

1 Other aspects of the Board’s decision were either 

unchallenged at the Veterans Court or remanded to the 

Board for further adjudication. For example, the issue of 

separate and initial ratings for other foot-related symptomologies (hypermobility and loss of use) was remanded

to the Board. And the Board’s 50% rating under diagnostic 

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REGIS v. MCDONOUGH 3

The Veterans Court concluded that Mr. Regis had not 

demonstrated error with respect to these aspects of the 

Board’s decision. Mr. Regis timely appealed. Our jurisdiction is assessed under 38 U.S.C. § 7292. 

DISCUSSION

We have limited jurisdiction to review Veterans Court 

decisions. Unless a constitutional issue is presented, we 

“may not review (A) a challenge to a factual determination, 

or (B) a challenge to a law or regulation as applied to the 

facts of a particular case.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2). “Even 

when an argument is couched in terms of statutory interpretation, this court lacks jurisdiction where the review the 

appellant requests ultimately reduces to an application of 

the law to facts.” Delisle v. McDonald, 789 F.3d 1372, 1374 

(Fed. Cir. 2015) (cleaned up). Likewise, merely characterizing an argument as presenting a constitutional issue is 

insufficient to confer jurisdiction. Flores v. Nicholson, 476 

F.3d 1379, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2007). 

The Veterans Court rejected Mr. Regis’s arguments related to his rating under diagnostic code 5276 for flatfoot, 

plantar fasciitis, and Morton’s disease because they were 

either too difficult to discern or because he had not pointed 

out which symptoms he contended “were not compensated 

under Diagnostic Code 5276 or how any such symptoms 

could have satisfied the criteria for a separate rating under 

Diagnostic Code 5284.” J.A. 12–13. Ultimately, the Veterans Court “[could not] conclude that [Mr. Regis] ha[d] met 

his burden of demonstrating that the Board erred,” J.A. 12, 

when the Board determined that diagnostic code 5276 covered these manifestations and that additional separate ratings would be duplicative. 

code 5276 for the period after May 11, 2015, was unchallenged. We need not outline other aspects of the Board’s 

decision in further detail here. 

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4 REGIS v. MCDONOUGH

Here, Mr. Regis’s arguments related to his 30% rating 

under diagnostic code 5276 and lack of a separate rating 

under diagnostic code 5284 are all arguments about factual 

determinations or the Veterans Court’s application of law 

to fact. Specifically, his arguments amount to contentions 

that: (1) he should have received a 50% rating instead of a 

30% rating under diagnostic code 5276 for the period prior 

to May 11, 2015; and (2) the Board should have found that 

his manifestations of plantar fasciitis and Morton’s disease 

were sufficiently separate from his manifestations of flatfoot such that their separate and additional rating under 

diagnostic code 5284 would not have been duplicative. 

These are factual issues—or, at most, issues of application 

of law to fact. We recognize that Mr. Regis has couched 

these arguments in terms of regulatory interpretation and 

constitutional issues; however, that is insufficient to confer 

jurisdiction here. See Delisle, 789 F.3d at 1374; Flores, 476 

F.3d at 1382. 

We also dismiss Mr. Regis’s appeal as it pertains to the 

Veterans Court’s decision related to TDIU. Initially, we 

note that Mr. Regis appears to be under the impression 

that the Veterans Court somehow denied a TDIU claim

that the Board dismissed. See Appellant’s Br. 30. That 

does not seem to be the case. The Board deferred assessment of the issue of an earlier TDIU effective date (which 

was raised in a correspondence that had “10182 11B” written on it) until Mr. Regis indicated which appeal track he 

intended to select by filing either VA Form 10182 or VA 

Form 9. This form-request aspect of the Board’s decision 

was not challenged or addressed at the Veterans Court. Instead, Mr. Regis raised an unclear argument related to 

TDIU based on the state of the record evidence in 2010. 

The Veterans Court concluded that the argument raised 

was “vague and lacking in analysis,” was presented without “cit[ing] any evidence in the record,” and the Veterans 

Court declined to address it further. J.A. 16. Here, 

Mr. Regis’s arguments are also very difficult to parse. 

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REGIS v. MCDONOUGH 5

However, they generally seem to challenge a determination 

the Veterans Court did not make on an issue it was not 

presented with, or otherwise challenge the Veterans 

Court’s conclusion that his argument there was underdeveloped. 

CONCLUSION

We have considered Mr. Regis’s remaining arguments 

and find them unpersuasive. Because Mr. Regis’s appeal 

does not present issues within our limited jurisdiction, we 

dismiss. 

DISMISSED

COSTS

No costs.

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