United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 19, 2019 Decided November 22, 2019

No. 18-1250

NATIONAL TREASURY EMPLOYEES UNION,

PETITIONER

v.

FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS AUTHORITY,

RESPONDENT

On Petition for Review of a Decision and Order 

of the Federal Labor Relations Authority

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

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

Tabitha G. Macko, Deputy Chief Counsel, Federal Labor 

Relations Authority, argued the cause for respondent. On the 

brief was Rebecca J. Osborne, Acting Deputy Solicitor. Noah 

B. Peters, Attorney, entered an appearance.

Before: TATEL and SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judges, and 

GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Tatel.

TATEL, Circuit Judge: When federal employees travel for 

official business, federal law entitles them to compensation for 
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certain time and expenses. The labor union representing

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees proposed a 

new way to determine an employee’s eligibility for travel time 

and expenses, but CBP took the position that the union’s 

proposal was nonnegotiable because, in CBP’s view, the 

proposal ran afoul of government travel regulations. The 

Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) agreed with CBP, 

and the union now petitions for review. Because the FLRA’s 

decision relies on a mathematical error and a misunderstanding 

of the union’s proposal, we vacate and remand.

I.

As directed by Congress, the General Services 

Administration issued the Federal Travel Regulation (FTR), a 

body of rules dictating by which planes, trains, and 

automobiles federal employees may travel, as well as under 

what conditions and to what extent those employees will be 

compensated for the costs of their journeys. See 5 U.S.C. 

§ 5707(a)(1); 41 C.F.R. §§ 300–1.1 et seq. Central to this case, 

the FTR defines the area including and surrounding an 

employee’s regular workplace—the employee’s “[o]fficial 

station”—as a “mileage radius around a particular point, a 

geographic boundary, or any other definite domain, provided 

no part of the area is more than 50 miles from where the 

employee regularly performs his or her duties.” 41 C.F.R. 

§ 300–3.1. When traveling outside of their official stations, 

federal employees may be eligible for overtime compensation, 

see, e.g., 5 C.F.R. §§ 551.422(d), 550.112(j), and room-andboard reimbursements, see, e.g., 41 C.F.R. § 301–11.1. 

Additionally, and also central to this case, the FTR requires that 

employees traveling for work use “the most expeditious means 

practicable.” Id. § 301–70.100(b).

CBP presently defines an official station in terms of fifty 

as-the-crow-flies miles, that is, the Agency draws a circle with 
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a fifty mile radius around the employee’s regular workplace 

and that area is the employee’s official station. But because 

CBP employees are more likely to travel by car than by crow, 

the National Treasury Employees Union—the exclusive 

bargaining representative for CBP employees—sought during 

collective bargaining to more accurately compensate 

employees for the costs they actually incur. Specifically, the 

Union proposed to define an employee’s “official station” as 

“extend[ing] 50 road miles [in every direction] from the 

employee’s official duty station.” Pet. for Review at 4, Joint 

Appendix 4. (A “duty station” is the “location where an 

employee normally reports for the workday.” National 

Collective Bargaining Agreement Between U.S. Customs and 

Border Protection and the National Treasury Employees Union

(NCBA) 64 (2017).) To illustrate, a crow flying from the 

Metaline Falls, Washington CBP station to the Porthill, Idaho

station will travel 36 miles, but the lowly road driver will travel 

55 miles—through a foreign country, no less—to get from one

station to the other. Under CBP’s current rule, employees 

traveling the more-than fifty road miles from Metaline Falls to 

Porthill receive no compensation for overtime and per diem 

costs; under the Union’s proposal, they would be compensated.

CBP took the position that the Union’s new way of 

defining “official station” was nonnegotiable. Under federal 

law, agencies “may not negotiate over proposed conditions of 

employment that are ‘inconsistent with any Federal law or any 

Government-wide rule or regulation,’” U.S. Department of Air 

Force v. FLRA, 952 F.2d 446, 448 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (quoting 5 

U.S.C. § 7117(a)(1)), and according to CBP, the Union’s

proposal conflicts with the FTR’s definition of “official 

station.” CBP and the Union agreed to sever their dispute, 

allowing the rest of the collective bargaining agreement to go 

into effect, and to submit the issue to the FLRA. After hearing 

the parties’ arguments, the FLRA sided with CBP. Analyzing
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the Union’s road-mile proposal in light of the FTR’s definition 

of “official station,” the FLRA concluded that the proposed 

official station does not qualify as “a mileage radius around a 

particular point [or] a geographic boundary.” National 

Treasury Employees Union (“NTEU”), 70 F.L.R.A. 724, 725 

(2018) (quoting 41 C.F.R. § 300–3.1). The sole question, then, 

was whether the Union’s road-mile rule would create a 

“definite domain.” Because “‘[d]efinite domain’ is not defined 

within the FTR,” id. at 725 n.22, the FLRA began with the 

dictionary: “Definite” means “clearly stated or decided; not 

vague or doubtful,” id. (quoting New Oxford American 

Dictionary (3d ed. 2010)); and “domain” means “[t]he territory 

over which sovereignty is exercised,” id. (quoting Black’s Law 

Dictionary (10th ed. 2014)). Relying on these definitions, the 

FLRA ruled that the Union’s proposal ran afoul of the FTR: “It 

is not a definite area, and could extend more than fifty miles 

from where the employee regularly performs his or her duties 

or vary with every employee and every trip.” Id. at 725–26. 

One FLRA member dissented. In response to the 

majority’s concern that each trip would vary in road mileage, 

the dissenter pointed out that the FTR requires employees to 

travel “by the most expeditious means practicable,” thus 

rendering “definite” the area in which an employee could travel 

fifty road miles. Id. at 728 (DuBester, Member, dissenting)

(internal quotation marks omitted). 

The Union now petitions for review. See 5 U.S.C. 

§ 7123(a) (“Any person aggrieved by any final order of the 

[FLRA] . . . may . . . institute an action for judicial review of 

the Authority’s order . . . in the United States Court of Appeals 

for the District of Columbia.”).
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II.

If a reviewing court concludes that an FLRA decision is 

“arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not 

in accordance with law,” it must “hold [the decision] unlawful 

and set [it] aside.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2); see id. § 7123(c)

(incorporating section 706 standard for judicial review of 

FLRA orders). Urging us to do just that, the Union argues that 

its proposal qualifies as a “domain” because it defines an area

encompassing all points within fifty road miles of an

employee’s regular workplace and “definite” because each 

boundary point—calculated using a “most efficient means”

standard—can be readily ascertained through widely available 

mapping applications. Defending its decision, the FLRA 

argues that the Union’s proposal does not constitute a 

“domain” because it does not demarcate a geographic area, and 

it is not “definite” because it leaves open too many variables, 

such as which mapping app to use and how to adjust for bad 

weather, traffic, or road closures.

Although the FLRA repeatedly claims that its 

interpretation of the regulation is “reasonabl[e],” Resp’t’s Br.

1, 2, 7, 10, it acknowledges, as it must, that we owe it no 

deference because the Authority did not write the regulation, 

and we “do not defer to the FLRA’s interpretation of 

regulations promulgated by other agencies,” Air Force, 952 

F.2d at 450; see Resp’t’s Br. 9–10. Of course, the General 

Services Administration’s interpretation of “definite domain”

would be entitled to deference, but no one—not CBP, not the 

Union, not even the FLRA—ever asked it for its views. See 

Oral Arg. Rec. 6:46–8:04. Fortunately, we have no need to

define “definite domain” because, regardless of what the term 

means, the FLRA’s decision rests on two glaring errors and is

thus arbitrary and capricious. See American Federation of 

Government Employees, Local 2924 v. FLRA, 470 F.3d 375, 

380 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (“To be upheld, the decision ‘must come 
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with [such] relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might 

accept as adequate to support a conclusion.’” (alteration in 

original) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting American

Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Capital 

Area Council 26 v. FLRA, 395 F.3d 443, 447 (D.C. Cir. 2005));

id. (“[I]f the result reached is ‘illogical on its own terms,’ the 

Authority’s order is arbitrary and capricious.” (quoting IRS v. 

FLRA, 963 F.2d 429, 439 (D.C. Cir. 1992)).

Recall that the FLRA’s analysis appears in just one 

sentence: “It is not a definite area, and could extend more than 

fifty miles from where the employee regularly performs his or 

her duties or vary with every employee and every trip.” NTEU, 

70 F.L.R.A. at 725–26. Although this haphazardly comma’d 

sentence is difficult to unpack, it appears to rest on two 

propositions: that the Union’s proposal would create an official 

station that, one, extends beyond a fifty-mile-radius circle and, 

two, varies with each employee and every trip. Neither is 

correct.

The first proposition is mathematically false. Because the 

shortest distance between two points is a straight line, see 

James Pryde, Euclid’s Elements of Plane Geometry 18–19 

(1860), an “official station” defined in road miles could never 

“extend more than fifty miles from where the employee 

regularly performs his or her duties,” NTEU, 70 F.L.R.A. at 

725–26. The shortest path connecting an employee’s 

workplace to the edge of a fifty-mile-radius circle is a straight 

road, and that road would measure fifty miles whether 

traversed by a fleet of cars or a murder of crows. Every other 

long and winding road from the center of that circle to the edge 

will exceed fifty road miles, meaning that it is impossible for 

an area defined by every point an employee could travel within 

fifty road miles to ever extend beyond a fifty-mile-radius circle.
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The FLRA’s second proposition—that the Union’s 

proposed “official station” will “vary with every employee and 

every trip,” id. at 726—is also flawed, but for a different 

reason. According to the FLRA, the official boundary will 

constantly vary because “two trips from [one point to another] 

could be greater or fewer than 50 miles depending on [the]

route taken by the driver,” Resp’t’s Br. 16. But the Authority 

fails to account for the fact that the FTR requires federal 

employees to travel “by the most expeditious means 

practicable.” 41 C.F.R. § 301–70.100(b); see also NTEU, 70 

F.L.R.A. at 728 (DuBester, Member, dissenting). Specifically, 

employees “must travel to [their] destination[s] by the usually 

traveled route[s] unless [their] agency authorizes or approves 

[] different route[s] as officially necessary.” 41 C.F.R. § 301–

10.7. Moreover, in a provision titled “What is my liability if, 

for personal convenience, I travel by an indirect route or 

interrupt travel by a direct route?” the FTR clarifies that 

employees’ “reimbursement[s] will be limited to the cost of 

travel by a direct route . . . . [Employees] will be responsible 

for any additional costs.” Id. § 301–10.8. Therefore, regardless 

of how many extra miles wandering employees might drive, 

their eligibility for time and expenses will be determined based 

on the road miles of the most expeditious route.

The FLRA insists that its sole job was to analyze the 

Union’s proposal in light of “this one reg[ulation]” (section 

300–3.1), Oral Arg. Rec. at 20:55–58, not in light of other FTR 

provisions. But the collective bargaining agreement, in which 

the Union seeks to include its road-mile metric, itself 

incorporates a “most expeditious means” standard. The 

agreement provides, “[n]o employee is entitled to 

reimbursements that are not permitted pursuant to the Federal 

Travel Regulation[]” and “the Employer will reimburse the 

employee for travel and/or moving expenses in accordance 

with applicable law, regulation (including the Federal Travel 
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Regulation[]) and the terms of this Agreement.” NCBA 66,

223. Additionally, the CBP’s own travel policies, contained in 

its Travel Handbook—also incorporated by reference in the 

collective bargaining agreement—deploy a “most expeditious 

means” standard: “Employees must use the mode of 

transportation that provides the most direct, most traveled 

route.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, HB 5300-13A, 

Travel Handbook 2-7 (Nov. 2013). Echoing the FTR, the 

Handbook provides that when an employee deviates from the

direct route “for personal reasons, or by unauthorized modes of 

transportation,” that employee bears responsibility for the 

additional costs because “[o]nly those travel expenses that are 

necessary and/or incidental to official travel should be 

authorized and approved.” Id. at 1-2, 2-7.

Finally, the FLRA argues that “employees’ official 

stations would be literally unknowable until their travel was 

completed.” Resp’t’s Br. 15. But CBP’s Travel Handbook 

expressly requires that employees “obtain electronic or written 

approval to travel . . . before the start of a scheduled trip,” 

Travel Handbook 1-1 (emphasis added), and it is presumably 

during this pre-approval process that CBP, applying the “most 

expeditious means” requirement, “will select the single, 

specific route for employees to use.” Reply Br. 7; see also

NCBA at 68 (“Upon timely application, the Agency will take 

all reasonable steps, consistent with current policies and 

procedures, to provide travel advances to employees prior to 

the date of departure on official travel.”).
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III.

Although there are miles to go before the parties sleep, it 

is here that we exit the highway. Because both of the FLRA’s 

reasons for finding the proposal nonnegotiable were flatly 

wrong, we grant the petition for review, vacate, and remand for 

further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

So ordered.