Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/582/16-399/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 16:23:17+00:00

Document:
Under the Civil Service Reform Act, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has the power to review certain personnel actions against federal employees. If an employee asserts rights under the CSRA only, MSPB decisions are subject to judicial review exclusively in the Federal Circuit, 5 U.S.C. 7703(b)(1). If the employee invokes only federal antidiscrimination law, the proper forum is federal district court. An employee who complains of a serious adverse employment action and attributes the action, in whole or in part, to bias based on race, gender, age, or disability brings a “mixed case.” When the MSPB dismisses a mixed case on the merits or on procedural grounds, review authority lies in district court, not the Federal Circuit. Perry received notice that he would be terminated from his Census Bureau employment for spotty attendance. Perry agreed to early retirement. The settlement required Perry to dismiss discrimination claims he had filed separately with the EEOC. After retiring, Perry appealed to the MSPB, alleging discrimination based on race, age, and disability, and retaliation for his discrimination complaints. He claimed the settlement had been coerced. Presuming Perry’s retirement to be voluntary, an ALJ dismissed his case for lack of jurisdiction. The MSPB affirmed, stating that Perry could seek review in the Federal Circuit. Perry instead sought review in the D.C. Circuit, which transferred the case to the Federal Circuit. The Supreme Court reversed. The proper review forum when the MSPB dismisses a mixed case on jurisdictional grounds is district court. A nonfrivolous claim that an agency action appealable to the MSPB violates an antidiscrimination statute listed in section 7702(a)(1) suffices to establish district court jurisdiction. Had Congress wanted to bifurcate judicial review, sending merits and procedural decisions to district court and jurisdictional dismissals to the Federal Circuit, it could have said so.
A federal district court has the authority to review the dismissal of a case by the Merit Systems Protection Board that involves a mixture of federal anti-discrimination and Civil Service Reform Act claims.
Under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB or Board) has the power to review certain serious personnel actions against federal employees. If an employee asserts rights under the CSRA only, MSPB decisions are subject to judicial review exclusively in the Federal Circuit. 5 U. S. C. §7703(b)(1). If the employee invokes only federal antidiscrimination law, the proper forum for judicial review is federal district court. See Kloeckner v. Solis, 568 U. S. 41 .
(b) The Government’s proposed distinction—between MSPB merits and procedural decisions, on the one hand, and the Board’s jurisdictional rulings, on the other—has multiple infirmities. Had Congress wanted to bifurcate judicial review, sending merits and procedural decisions to district court and jurisdictional dismissals to the Federal Circuit, it could have said so. See Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 52. The Government’s newly devised attempt to distinguish jurisdictional dismissals from procedural dismissals is a departure from its position in Kloeckner. Such a distinction, as both parties recognized in Kloeckner, would be perplexing and elusive. The distinction between jurisdiction and the merits is also not inevitably sharp, for the two inquiries may overlap. And because the MSPB may issue rulings on alternate or multiple grounds, some “jurisdictional,” others procedural or substantive, allocating judicial review authority based on a separate rule for jurisdictional rulings may prove unworkable in practice. Perry’s comprehension of the complex statutory text, in contrast, serves “[t]he CSRA’s objective of creating an integrated scheme of review[, which] would be seriously undermined” by “parallel litigation regarding the same agency action.” Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 567 U. S. 1 . Pp. 12–17.
In the CSRA, Congress created the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB or Board) to review certain serious personnel actions against federal employees. If an employee asserts rights under the CSRA only, MSPB decisions, all agree, are subject to judicial review exclusively in the Federal Circuit. §7703(b)(1). If the employee asserts no civil-service rights, invoking only federal antidiscrimination law, the proper forum for judicial review, again all agree, is a federal district court, see Kloeckner v. Solis, 568 U. S. 41, 46 (2012) ; the Federal Circuit, while empowered to review MSPB decisions on civil-service claims, §7703(b)(1)(A), lacks authority over claims arising under antidiscrimination laws, see §7703(c).
When a complaint presents a mixed case, and the MSPB dismisses it, must the employee resort to the Federal Circuit for review of any civil-service issue, reserving claims under federal antidiscrimination law for discrete district court adjudication? If the MSPB dismisses a mixed case on the merits, the parties agree, review authority lies in district court, not in the Federal Circuit. In Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 50, 56, we held, the proper review forum is also the district court when the MSPB dismisses a mixed case on procedural grounds, in Kloeckner itself, failure to meet a deadline for Board review set by the MSPB. We hold today that the review route remains the same when the MSPB types its dismissal of a mixed case as “jurisdictional.” As in Kloeckner, we are mindful that review rights should be read not to protract proceedings, increase costs, and stymie employees, but to secure expeditious resolution of the claims employees present. See Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 567 U. S. 1, 15 (2012) (emphasizing need for “clear guidance about the proper forum for [an] employee’s [CSRA] claims”). Cf. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. l.
The CSRA “establishes a framework for evaluating personnel actions taken against federal employees.” Kloeckner v. Solis, 568 U. S. 41, 44 (2012) . For “particularly serious” actions, “for example, a removal from employment or a reduction in grade or pay,” “the affected employee has a right to appeal the agency’s decision to the MSPB.” Ibid. (citing §§1204, 7512, 7701). Such an appeal may present a civil-service claim only. Typically, the employee may allege that “the agency had insufficient cause for taking the action under the CSRA.” Id., at 44. An appeal to the MSPB, however, may also complain of adverse action taken, in whole or in part, because of discrimination prohibited by another federal statute, for example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000e et seq., or the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U. S. C. §621 et seq. See 5 U. S. C. §7702(a)(1); Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 44.
Section 7703(b) designates the proper forum for judicial review of MSPB decisions. Section 7703(b)(1)(A) provides the general rule: “[A] petition to review a . . . final decision of the Board shall be filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.” Section 7703(b)(2) states the exception here relevant, governing “[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of [§]7702.” See Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 46 (“The ‘cases of discrimination’ in §7703(b)(2)’s exception . . . are mixed cases, in which an employee challenges as discriminatory a personnel action appealable to the MSPB.”). Such cases “shall be filed under [the enforcement sections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq.], as applicable.” §7703(b)(2). Those enforcement provisions “all authorize suit in federal district court.” Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 46 (citing, inter alia, 42 U. S. C. §§2000e–16(c), 2000e–5(f); 29 U. S. C. §633a(c); §216(b)). Thus, if the MSPB decides against the employee on the merits of a mixed case, the statute instructs her to seek review in federal district court under the enforcement provision of the relevant antidiscrimination laws. §7703(b)(2); see Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 56, n. 4.
The D. C. Circuit held that the Federal Circuit had jurisdiction over Perry’s petition and transferred his case to that court under 28 U. S. C. §1631. 829 F. 3d, at 763. The court’s disposition was precedent-bound: In a prior decision, Powell v. Department of Defense, 158 F. 3d 597, 598 (1998), the D. C. Circuit had held that the Federal Circuit is the proper forum for judicial review of MSPB decisions dismissing mixed cases “on procedural or threshold grounds.” See 829 F. 3d, at 764, 767–768. Notably, Powell ranked as a “procedural or threshold matter” “the Board’s view of its jurisdiction.” 158 F. 3d, at 599 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Perry emphasizes in response that §7702(a)(1)(A)’s language, delineating cases in which an employee “has been affected by an action which the employee . . . may appeal to the [MSPB],” is not confined to cases an em-ployee may successfully appeal to the Board. Brief for Peti-tioner 19. The MSPB’s adverse ruling on the merits of his claim that the settlement was coerced, Perry argues, “did not retroactively divest the MSPB of jurisdiction to render that decision.” Id., at 21. The key consideration, according to Perry, is not what the MSPB determined about appealability; it is instead the nature of an employee’s claim that he had been “affected by an action [appealable] to the [MSPB]” (here, suspension for more than 14 days and involuntary removal, see §7512(1), (2)). See id., at 11, 23–24. Perry draws support for this argument from our recognition that “a party [may] establish jurisdiction at the outset of a case by means of a nonfrivolous assertion of jurisdictional elements,” Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., 513 U. S. 527, 537 (1995) . See Brief for Petitioner 21–22.
As just noted, a nonfrivolous allegation of jurisdiction generally suffices to establish jurisdiction upon initiation of a case. See Jerome B. Grubart, Inc., 513 U. S., at 537. See also Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678 –683 (1946) (To invoke federal-question jurisdiction, allegations in a complaint must simply be more than “insubstantial or frivolous,” and “[i]f the court does later exercise its jurisdiction to determine that the allegations in the complaint do not state a ground for relief, then dismissal of the case would be on the merits, not for want of jurisdiction.”). So too here: whether an employee “has been affected by anaction which [she] may appeal to the [MSPB],” §7702(a) (1)(A), turns on her well-pleaded allegations. Kloeckner, EEOC regulations, and Courts of Appeals’ decisions are corroborative.
EEOC regulations, see supra, at 3, are in accord: The defining feature of a “mixed case appeal,” those regulations instruct, is the employee’s “alleg[ation] that an appealable agency action was effected, in whole or in part, because of discrimination.” 29 CFR §1614.302(a)(2) (2016) (emphasis added). Several Courts of Appeals have similarly described mixed-case appeals as those alleging an adverse action subject to MSPB jurisdiction taken, in whole or in part, because of unlawful discrimination. See, e.g., Downey v. Runyon, 160 F. 3d 139, 143 (CA2 1998) (“Mixed appeals to the MSPB are those appeals alleging an appealable action affected in whole or in part by prohibited discrimination.” (emphasis added)); Powell, 158 F. 3d, at 597 (defining mixed-case appeal as “an appeal alleging both a Board-jurisdictional agency action and a claim of unlawful discrimination” (emphasis added)).See also Conforto, 713 F. 3d, at 1126–1127, n. 5 (Dyk, J., dissenting).
Because Perry “complain[ed] of a personnel action serious enough to appeal to the MSPB” (in his case, a 30-day suspension and involuntary removal, see supra, at 6; §7512(1), (2)) and “allege[d] that the [personnel] action was based on discrimination,” he brought a mixed case. Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 44. Judicial review of such a case lies in district court. Id., at 50, 56.
The Government rests heavily on a distinction between MSPB merits and procedural decisions, on the one hand, and the Board’s jurisdictional rulings, on the other. The distinction has multiple infirmities.
“If Congress had wanted to [bifurcate judicial review,] send[ing] merits decisions to district court and procedural dismissals to the Federal Circuit,” we observed in Kloeckner, “it could just have said so.” Id., at 52. The same observation could be made about bifurcating judicial review here, sending the MSPB’s merits and procedural decisions to district court, but its jurisdictional dismissals to the Federal Circuit.
The Government’s attempt to separate jurisdictional dismissals from procedural dismissals is newly devised. In Kloeckner, the Government agreed with the employee that there was “no basis” for a procedure-jurisdiction distinction. Brief for Respondent, O. T. 2012, No. 11–184, p. 25, n. 3; see Reply to Brief in Opposition, O. T. 2012, No. 11–184, pp. 1–2 (stating employee’s agreement with the Government that procedural and jurisdictional dismissals should travel together). Issues of both kinds, the Government there urged, should go to the Federal Circuit. Drawing such a distinction, the Government observed, would be “difficult and unpredictable.” Brief in Opposition in Kloeckner, O. T. 2012, No. 11–184, p. 15 (internal quotation marks omitted). Now, in light of our holding in Kloeckner that procedural dismissals should go to district court, the Government has changed course, contending that MSPB procedural and jurisdictional dismissals should travel different paths.
A procedure-jurisdiction distinction for purposes of determining the court in which judicial review lies, as both parties recognized in Kloeckner, would be perplexing and elusive. If a 30-day suspension followed by termination becomes nonappealable to the MSPB when the Board credits a release signed by the employee, one may ask why a determination that the employee complained of such adverse actions (suspension and termination) too late, i.e., after a Board-set deadline, does not similarly render the complaint nonappealable. In both situations, the Board disassociates itself from the case upon making a threshold determination. This Court, like others, we note, has sometimes wrestled over the proper characterization of timeliness questions. Compare Bowles v. Russell, 551 U. S. 205 –211, 215 (2007) (timely filing of notice of appeal in civil cases is “jurisdictional”), with id., at 217–219 (Souter, J., dissenting) (timeliness of notice of appeal is a procedural issue).
Just as the proper characterization of a question as jurisdictional rather than procedural can be slippery, the distinction between jurisdictional and merits issues is not inevitably sharp, for the two inquiries may overlap. See Shoaf v. Department of Agriculture, 260 F. 3d 1336, 1341 (CA Fed. 2001) (“recogniz[ing] that the MSPB’s jurisdiction and the merits of an alleged involuntary separation are inextricably intertwined” (internal quotation marks omitted)). This case fits that bill. The MSPB determined that it lacked jurisdiction over Perry’s civil-service claims on the ground that he voluntarily released those claimsby entering into a valid settlement with his employing agency, the Census Bureau. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 27a. But the validity of the settlement is at the heart of the dispute on the merits of Perry’s complaint. In essence, the MSPB ruled that it lacked jurisdiction because Perry’s claims fail on the merits. See Shoaf, 260 F. 3d, at 1341 (If it is established that an employee’s “resignation or retirement was involuntary and thus tantamount to forced removal,” then “not only [does the Board] ha[ve] jurisdiction, but also the employee wins on the merits and is entitled to reinstatement.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). See also Conforto, 713 F. 3d, at 1126 (Dyk, J., dissenting) (“[I]t cannot be that [the Federal Circuit] lack[s] jurisdiction to review the ‘merits’ of mixed cases but nevertheless may review ‘jurisdictional’ issues that are identical to the merits . . . .”).
Desirable as national uniformity may be, it should not override the expense, delay, and inconvenience of requiring employees to sever inextricably related claims, resorting to two discrete appellate forums, in order to safeguard their rights. Perry’s comprehension of the complex statutory text, we are persuaded, best serves “[t]he CSRA’s objective of creating an integrated scheme of review[, which] would be seriously undermined” by “parallel litigation regarding the same agency action.” Elgin, 567 U. S., at 14. See also United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439 –445 (1988). Perry asks us not to “tweak” the statute, see post, at 1, but to read it sensibly, i.e., to refrain from reading into it the appeal-splitting bifurcation sought by the Government. Accordingly, we hold: (1) the Federal Circuit is the proper review forum when the MSPB disposes of complaints arising solely under the CSRA; and (2) in mixed cases, such as Perry’s, in which the employee (or former employee) complains of serious adverse action prompted, in whole or in part, by the employing agency’s violation of federal antidiscrimination laws, the district court is the proper forum for judicial review.
1 Many CSRA claimants proceed pro se. See MSPB, Congressional Budget Justification FY 2017, p. 14 (2016) (“Generally, at least half or more of the appeals filed with the [MSPB] are from pro se appellants . . . .”).
2 If the MSPB fails to render a “judicially reviewable action” within 120 days, an employee may, “at any time after . . . the 120th day,” “file a civil action [in district court] to the same extent and in the same manner as provided in” the federal antidiscrimination laws invoked by the employee. §7702(e)(1).
3 Our decision in Kloeckner v. Solis, 568 U. S. 41 (2012) , did not merely assume that the civil-service component of mixed cases travels to district court. See id., at 56, n. 4 (“If the MSPB rejects on the merits a complaint alleging that an agency violated the CSRA as well as an antidiscrimination law, the suit will come to district court for a decision on both questions.” (emphasis added)). But see post, at 9–10. Characteristic of “mixed cases,” the employee in Kloeckner complained of adverse action taken, at least in part, because of discrimination. See 568 U. S., at 47. The Board dismissed that case, not for any flaw under antidiscrimination law, but because the employee missed a deadline set by the MSPB. See id., at 47–48.
4 Our interpretation is also consistent with another CSRA provision, §7513(d), which provides that “[a]n employee against whom an action is taken under this section is entitled to appeal to the . . . Board.” Because the “entitle[ment] to appeal” conferred in §7513(d) must be determined before an appeal is filed, such a right cannot depend on the outcome of the appeal.
5 If, as the dissent and the Government argue, see post, at 8–10; Brief for Respondent 19–26, 33–35, Perry’s case is not “mixed,” one can only wonder what kind of case it is, surely not one asserting rights under the CSRA only, or one invoking only antidiscrimination law. See supra, at 1–2. This is, of course, a paradigm mixed case: Perry alleges serious personnel actions (suspension and forced retirement) caused in whole or in part by prohibited discrimination. So did the employee in Kloeckner. She alleged that her firing (a serious personnel action) was based on discrimination. See 568 U. S., at 47. Thus Perry, like Kloeckner, well understood what the term “mixed case” means.
6 Notably, the dissent ventures no support for the principal argument made by the Government, i.e., that MSPB jurisdictional dispositions belong in the Federal Circuit, procedural and merits dispositions, in district court.
7 As Judge Dyk, dissenting in Conforto v. Merit Systems Protection Bd., 713 F. 3d 1111 (CA Fed. 2013), pointed out: “[W]here Congress intended to distinguish between different types of Board decisions, it did so expressly.” Id., at 1124, n. 1 (citing §3330b(b) (“An election under this section may not be made . . . after the [MSPB] has issued a judicially reviewable decision on the merits of the appeal.” (emphasis added)); §7703(a)(2) (“The Board shall be named respondent in any proceeding brought pursuant to this subsection, unless the employee . . . seeks review of a final order or decision on the merits . . . .” (emphasis added))).
8 This is not the first time the Government has changed its position. Before the Federal Circuit in Ballentine v. Merit Systems Protection Bd., 738 F. 2d 1244 (1984), the Government moved to transfer to district court an appeal challenging a jurisdictional dismissal by the MSPB. See id., at 1245. The Government argued that “even a question of the Board’s jurisdiction to hear an attempted mixed case appeal must be addressed by a district court.” Id., at 1247 (internal quotation marks omitted). Rejecting the Government’s position, the Federal Circuit concluded that it could review MSPB decisions on “procedural or threshold matters, not related to the merits of a discrimination claim.” Ibid. In Kloeckner, we disapproved the Federal Circuit’s holding with respect to MSPB procedural dismissals. 568 U. S., at 50, 56. Today we disapprove Ballentine’s holding with respect to jurisdictional dismissals, thereby adopting precisely the position advanced by the Government in that case.
9 In civil litigation, a release is an affirmative defense to a plaintiff’s claim for relief, not something the plaintiff must anticipate and negate in her pleading. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 8(c)(1) (listing among affirmative defenses “release” and “waiver”); Newton v. Rumery, 480 U. S. 386, 391 (1987) . In that light, the MSPB’s jurisdiction should be determined by the adverse actions Perry asserts, suspension and forced retirement; the settlement releasing Perry’s claims would figure as a defense to his complaint, it would not enter into the determination whether the Board has jurisdiction over his claims.
10 If a reviewing court “agree[d] with the Board’s assessment,” then Perry would indeed have “lost his chance to pursue his . . . discrimination claim[s],” post, at 3, for those claims would have been defeated had he voluntarily submitted to the agency’s action.
11 In Kloeckner, we rejected the Government’s national uniformity argument. See 568 U. S., at 55–56, n. 4. “When Congress passed the CSRA, the Federal Circuit did not exist,” we observed, so uniformity did not then figure in Congress’ calculus. Id., at 56, n. 4. Moreover, even under the Government’s reading, “many cases involving federal employment issues [would be resolved] in district court. If the MSPB rejects on the merits a complaint alleging that an agency violated the CSRA as well as an antidiscrimination law, the suit will come to district court for a decision on both questions.” Ibid.
12 In both Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 567 U. S. 1 (2012) , and United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439 (1988) , we rejected employees’ attempts to divide particular issues or claims among review forums. In Elgin, a federal employee opted not to seek review of an MSPB ALJ’s decision, either before the full Board or in the Federal Circuit; he instead brought in District Court, in the first instance, a constitutional challenge to an agency personnel action. 567 U. S., at 7–8. We concluded that an employee with civil-service claims must follow the CSRA’s procedures and may not bring a standalone constitutional challenge in district court. Id., at 8. In Fausto, a federal employee with CSRA claims filed an action in the United States Claims Court under the Back Pay Act of 1966. 484 U. S., at 443. We determined that the employee could not bring his action under the Back Pay Act because the CSRA provided “the comprehensive and integrated review scheme.” See id., at 454. Contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, see post, at 10, neither case indicated that the Federal Circuit, as opposed to district court, is the preferred forum for judicial review of all CSRA claims. Rather, both decisions emphasized the benefits of an integrated review scheme and the problems associated with bifurcating consideration of a single matter in different forums. See 567 U. S., at 13–14; 484 U. S., at 444–445. It is the dissent’s insistence on bifurcated review, therefore, that “Elgin and Fausto warned against,” post, at 10.
First, the rule. The Act says that an employee’s appeal usually “shall be filed in . . . the Federal Circuit,” §7703(b)(1)(A), which then applies a deferential, APA-style standard of review familiar to administrative law, §7703(c). No doubt this makes sense, too, for Congress established the Federal Circuit in no small part to ensure a uniform case law governs Executive Branch personnel actions and guarantees the equal treatment of civil servants without regard to geography. See United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439, 449 (1988) .
Second, the exception. Congress recognized that sometimes agencies taking adverse employment actions against employees violate not just federal civil service laws, but also federal antidiscrimination laws. Usually, of course, employees who wish to pursue discrimination claims in federal district court must first exhaust those claims in proceedings before their employing agency. See, e.g., 42 U. S. C. §2000e–16(c). But the Act provides another option. Employees affected by adverse employment actions that trigger the Act’s jurisdiction may (but need not) elect to exhaust their discrimination claims before the Board. See 5 U. S. C. §7702(a). They also may ask the Board to review discrimination claims already exhausted before their employing agencies, and in this way obtain an additional layer of administrative review. See ibid. In §7702 of the Act, Congress proceeded to set forth the rules the Board must apply in reviewing these cases of discrimination. And it then said that “[c]ases of discrimination subject to the provisions of section 7702” are exempt from the default rule of Federal Circuit review and instead “shall be filed” in district court “under” specified antidiscrimination statutes like Title VII or the ADEA. §7703(b)(2). At that point, district courts are instructed to engage in de novo factfinding, §7703(c), not APA-style judicial review, just as they would in any other discrimination lawsuit.
Take this one. Recall that the statute says that de novo standard of review applies to cases filed in district court. See 5 U. S. C. §7703(c). But everyone agrees that standard is poorly adapted to the review of administrative civil service decisions. So what’s to be done with civil service disputes that tag along to district court? Rather than see the problem as a clue things have gone awry, lower courts following Williams have suggested that maybe civil service claims should be assessed under deferential standards of review the Act prescribes only for (yes) Federal Circuit cases. And today Mr. Perry encourages us to follow suit too. See Brief for Petitioner 17, n.; Sher v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 488 F. 3d 489, 499 (CA1 2007), cert. denied, 552 U. S. 1309 (2008) .
But that’s just the beginning. The statute allows only cases “filed under” certain specified federal antidiscrimination statutes to proceed to district court. Those laws (of course) prescribe remedies to vindicate harms associated with discrimination, including equitable relief and damages. See, e.g., 29 U. S. C. §633a(c). But what remedies canor should a district court afford a plaintiff in a run-of-the-mill civil service dispute that lands there? Might a plaintiff be forced to litigate in the district court only to be told at the end that no remedial authority exists? May a district court fashion some remedy in the absence of a statutory mandate to do so? Should it only adopt APA-style remedies prescribed by the Act for (again) the Federal Circuit? Who knows.
And speaking of judicial economy, you might wonder what happened to the (no doubt efficient) policy Congress itself articulated when it declared that civil service issues should be decided by the Federal Circuit so they might be subject to a uniform body of appellate case law. See Fausto, 484 U. S., at 449; see also Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 567 U. S. 1 –14 (2012). In an effort to achieve a simulacrum of that statutory command, one Federal Circuit judge has suggested that the regional circuits hearing tag along civil service issues should defer to Federal Circuit interpretations of civil service laws, much as federal courts defer to state courts on matters of state law when sitting in diversity. See Williams, supra, at 1492–1493 (Nichols, J., concurring). Call it a sort of Erie doctrine for the Federal Circuit—if, of course, one lacking any basis in federalism, not to mention the statutory text.
Mr. Perry’s proposal for us may be seriously atextual and practically unattractive, but perhaps it has one thing going for it, he says. While we of course owe no fealty to Williams or other lower court opinions, and are free to learn from, rather than repeat, their misadventures, Mr. Perry suggests our decision in Kloeckner v. Solis, 568 U. S. 41 (2012) , requires us to rule for him. Whatever we think about the statute’s plain terms, he says, we are bound by precedent to send him to district court all the same.
Now, admittedly, a footnote in Kloeckner did seem to go a step farther and assume Williams’ view that civil service claims may tag along with discrimination claims to district court. Kloeckner, 568 U. S., at 55–56, n. 4. But even by its terms such an assumption wouldn’t help Mr. Perry, for he isn’t seeking to pursue a discrimination claim in district court. By his own telling, he is seeking to overturn the Board’s holding that it lacked jurisdiction to hear his administrative appeal so he might seek relief there in the first instance. And that, of course, raises only a question of civil service law. What’s more, the footnote’s discussion about Williams is no more than dicta. The footnote addressed only a policy argument from the government and said that argument failed both under Williams and for other reasons “[i]n any event.” 568 U. S., at 56, n. 4. As near as I can tell, then, Mr. Perry would have us upend a carefully crafted statutory scheme on the strength of a comment in one sentence of one footnote offered in reply to a policy argument that failed for other reasons anyway. Full respect for stare decisis does not demand so much from us. To the contrary, this Court has long made clear that where, as here, we have not “squarely addressed [an] issue, and have at most assumed [one side of it to be correct], we are free to address the issue on the merits.” Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, 631 (1993) ; see also Legal Services Corporation v. Valazquez, 531 U. S. 533, 537 (2001) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“Judicial decisions do not stand as binding ‘precedent’ for points that were not raised, not argued, and hence not analyzed”).
In Kloeckner v. Solis, the Supreme Court held that when the Board dismisses a mixed-case appeal without reaching the merits on a procedural ground - there, untimeliness - judicial review resides in district court (as when the Board reaches the merits), not the Federal Circuit. At issue in this appeal is whether Kloeckner effectively overruled this court's decision in Powell v. Dep’t of Def. The court held that it does not and that the court's precedent requires transferring the case to the Federal Court. The court found that Powell is materially indistinguishable from this case. Like Powell, petitioner resolved a disciplinary issue by agreeing to a significant employment action that could be appealed to the Board if involuntary. Like Powell, petitioner then claimed that his agreement had been involuntary due to discrimination. As in Powell, the Board disagreed, finding that the agreement was voluntary and thus dismissing the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. And like Powell, petitioner contends that review of the Board’s dismissal lies in district court. The court rejected that argument in Powell. Accordingly, the court transferred the petition for review to the Federal Circuit.

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