N OTE : This disposition is nonprecedential.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

______________________

M ICHAEL R. R EGIS , Sacramento, CA, pro se.

D ANIEL B ERTONI , Commercial Litigation Branch, CivilDivision, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for respondent

- appellee. Also represented by B RIAN M. B OYNTON , E R IC P. B RUSKIN , P ATRICIA M. M C C ARTHY ; E VAN S COTT G RANT , Y. K EN L EE , Office of General Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC. Case: 23-1299 Document: 52 Page: 1 Filed: 04/16/2024REGIS v. MCDONOUGH 2

______________________

Before P ROST , C HEN , and H UGHES , Circuit Judges

. P ER C URIAM

. Michael R. Regis appeals from a decision of the Courtof Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”) affirming the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (“Board”) decision to rat e his service

- connected bilateral -foot disability covered by diagnostic code 5276 at 3 0% for the effective period prior to May 11, 2015. Because this appeal does not present issues within our limited jurisdiction, we dismiss.

B ACKGROUND

Mr. Regis served honorably from 1983 to 2003. J.A. 20. A t issue here is the Veterans Court ’s decisio n related to the following aspects of an April 19, 2021

, Board decision: (1) the Board rat ed Mr. Regis’s bilateral

- foot disability under diagnostic code 5276 (flatfoot) at 30% for the effective period prior to May 11, 2015; (2) it deni ed separate rating s under diagnostic code 5284 (foot injuries, other) for the flatfoot

, plantar fasciitis , and Morton’s disease symptom ology already rated under diagnostic code 5276 ; and (3) it instructed Mr. Regis to file either a VA Fo r m 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 th at 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 . F or example , the issue of separate and initial rating s for other foot- related symptomologies (hypermobility and loss of use) w as remanded to the Board

. And the Board’s 50% rating under diagnostic Case: 23-1299 Document: 52 Page: 2 Filed: 04/16/2024REGIS v. MCDONOUGH 3

The Veterans Court conclud ed 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.

D ISCUSSION 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 couche d 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, mer e ly characteriz ing an argument as presenting a constitutional issue is insufficient to confer jurisdiction. Flores v. Nicholson , 476 F.3d 1379, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2007).

T he Veterans Court rejected Mr. Regis’s arguments related to his rating under diagnost ic code 5276 for flatfoot, plantar fasciitis, and Morton’s disease because they were either too difficult to discern or because he had no t poi nted 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 manifestation s and that additional separate ratings would be duplicative.

code 5276 for the period after May 11, 2015

, was unchallenged. W e need not outline other aspects of the Board’s decision in further deta il here. Case: 23-1299 Document: 52 Page: 3 Filed: 04/16/2024REGIS v. MCDONOUGH 4

Here, Mr. Regis’s arguments related to his 30% rating under diagnostic code 5276 and lack of a separate rating under diagno stic 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 cod e 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 diseasewere 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 r elated 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. T he Board deferr ed assessment of the issue of an earlier TDIU effective date (whichwas 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 F orm 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 a n 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. Case: 23-1299 Document: 52 Page: 4 Filed: 04/16/2024REGIS v. MCDONOUGH 5

However, they general ly seem to c hallenge 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.

C ONCLUSION

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

C OSTS

No costs. Case: 23-1299 Document: 52 Page: 5 Filed: 04/16/2024