Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/334/323
Timestamp: 2014-07-28 05:04:28
Document Index: 744126567

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 652', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 12', '§ 861', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 14', '§ 863', '§ 8', '§ 12', '§ 12', '§ 37', '§ 648', '§ 12', '§ 20', '§ 2', '§ 851', '§ 12', '§ 691', '§ 691']

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334 U.S. 323 (68 S.Ct. 1020, 92 L.Ed. 1416)
HILTON v. SULLIVAN et al.
Argued: April 21, 1948.
[HTML] Mr. Charles Fahy, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.
Argument of Counsel from page 324 intentionally omitted
The civil service regulations said to require termination of petitioner's active service divide government employees into three main groupsA, B, and C. Group A, which has the highest priority for retention, is composed of 'permanent employees'; groups B and C are composed of employees with limited tenures of employment. Group A is divided into five subgroups, the first three of which are of particular importance here. These three subgroups are:
Subgroup A-2, Employees without veteran's preference with 'good' (or higher) efficiency ratings.
There appears to be little room for contention that there is ambiguity in the language that Congress selected to express its purpose to require the restoration of a former government employee who entered the armed forces to his old position and to give him the right to retention for a year. The language is that such an employee 'shall be restored' to his position or to one like it, supplemented by language that he 'shall not be discharged from such position without cause within one year after such restoration.' We have examined the legislative history of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 and find nothing whatever which faintly suggests that Congress intended its language to be e §§ mandatory than implied by the words it used. The command in § 8(b)(A) that the Federal Government rehire its returning veteran employees contrasted sharply with the requirement in § 8(b)(B) that a private employer need not reemploy such a veteran when 'the employer's circumstances have so changed as to make it impossible or unreasonable to do so.' This difference was noted by the congressional sponsors of the 1940 Act, who thought that the Federal Government should set an example to private industry by providing jobs for all returning veteran employees.
The foregoing distinction is illustrated by the fact that civil service workers, unlike the private employees in the Fishgold case, are not confronted by a situation in which their employer, the Government, has an outstanding contract with them providing that they shall be retained in service in proportion to their 'length of service' as reductions in force become necessary. Whatever seniority rights government employees have when discharges or reductions in force are made depend entirely upon congressional acts and regulations issued in harmony with them. See 37 Stat. 555, 5 U.S.C. 652, 5 U.S.C.A. § 652. We have discovered no acts or regulations which can be construed to recognize a nonveteran's length of government service as a factor sufficient to override the requirement of § 8(b)(A) and § 8(c) that a veteran must be restored to his old job with the Federal Government and cannot be discharged therefrom without cause for one year. Thus, unlike the employees in the Fishgold case whose private-employment contract-derived seniority prevented their being laid off, petitioner has no comparable statutorily derived seniority rights to his job with the Government. Petitioner argues, however, that § 12 of the Veterans' Preference Act of 1944, 58 Stat. 390, 5 U.S.C. 861, 5 U.S.C.A. § 861, in effect amended § 8 and conferred retention rights upon him based upon his length of service. For the reasons we give below in discussing the validity of Subgroup A-1, we think this contention is without merit.
Finally, the Fishgold decision held only that a temporary layoff did not violate a veteran's right under § 8(c) not to be discharged without cause for one year after he had been restored to his old job. Here the petitioner asserts that the statutory one-year prohibition against discharge confers upon a reemployed veteran no security from a furlough for one year without pay, that such a furlough is not a 'discharge' within the meaning of s 8(c). The Commission has here treated a furlough of more than thirty days as the equivalent of a discharge. This is in accordance with prior governmental practice which has considered that the furlough of a veteran with military preference violates regulations providing that he shall not be 'discharged or dropped' when 'reductions in force are being made.'
Moreover, § 14 of the Veterans' Preference Act, 5 U.S.C.A. § 863, which safeguards preference eligibles against administrative denial of their preference rights, specifically places furloughs and suspensions for more than thirty days without pay on the same basis as discharges. Thus, the common meaning of furlough in governmental practice is not the same as that which the Court in the Fishgold case found to be the meaning of 'layoffs' and 'furloughs' in 'industrial parlance.' To give this one-year 'furlough' any less meaning than the statutory word 'discharge' would result in depriving government employee veterans of the entire congressional guarantee of a year's retention in their old jobs. We hold that the furlough, if applied to veterans, would be a 'discharge' within the meaning of § 8(c). Consequently, the Commission acted within its statutory duty by providing veterans a preference against such removals by establishing Subgroup A-1 Plus.
The Government interprets this proviso as a special withdrawal of the proviso-defined classes of veterans from the general terms of the first clause of § 12 relating to 'length of service.' It views this proviso as the congressional creation of classes of veterans' 'preference employees'
who 'shall', if they have the defined efficiency ratings, 'be retained in preference to all other competing employees' without regard to length of service as between veterans and nonveterans. Thus, under the government's interpretation, length of service would be given the 'due effect' required by the first clause of § 12 by its consideration in the determination of retention preferences as between veteran and veteran and as between nonveteran and nonveteran. This interpretation of the proviso and the section, it is argued, would give meaning to all the language used in them, is plainly called for by the language, and harmonizes this portion of the Act with all its other parts and with the Act's r oad purposes. The interpretation is compelled, so the Government argues, by the Act's legislative history, particularly when the proviso and preceding clauses in the section are viewed in the light of a long series of prior congressional enactments and authorized executive orders granting preferences in government employment to veterans and their close relatives. We agree with the Government that in the light of the foregoing factors no other interpretation of the pertinent parts of the section can fairly be reached.
In 1876, seventy-two years ago, Congress passed a law which required any executive department when making 'any reduction of force' to 'retain those persons who may be equally qualified who have been honorably discharged from the military or naval service of the United States and the widows and orphans of deceased soldiers and sailors.' 19 Stat. 143, 169, 5 U.S.C. 37, 5 U.S.C.A. § 37.
In 1912 Congress greatly strengthened the old 1876 policy by providing that 'in the event of reductions being made in the force in any of the executive departments, no honorably discharged soldier or sailor whose record in said department is rated good shall be discharged or dropped, or reduced in rank or salary.' 37 Stat. 360, 413, 5 U.S.C.A. § 648.
There is nothing ambiguous about this 1912 provision. It was an absolute command that no governmental department should discharge, drop, or reduce in rank any honorably discharged veteran government employee with a rating of 'good.' Length of service in no way qualified the preference given the veteran. And subsequent executive orders not only recognized this provision as giving veterans an absolute preference,
but also extended the preference to veterans in the field service
and to positions not under civil service.
Executive Order 4240 of June 4, 1925, as amended by Executive Order 5068 of March 2, 1929, provided, as does Subgroup A-1 here, an absolute retention preference for veterans over nonveterans where the veterans' efficiency ratings were 'good,' and a similar absolute preference over nonveterans whose ratings were less than good if the veterans' ratings were equal to those of the nonveterans. And at the time of passage of the Veterans' Preference Act of 1944, there were 1943 Civil Service Regulations outstanding
which granted veterans with permanent tenure and with a rating of 'good' or higher, precisely the same absolute retention preference over nonveterans which is now afforded by Subgroup A-1, here attacked as invalid. Consequently, a holding that veterans with a rating of 'good' no longer have a retention preference over nonveterans with longer service, would mean that passage of the Veterans' Preference Act in 1944 narrowed the long-existing scope of veterans' preferences in case of reduction in force of government personnel. The purpose oft hat Act's sponsors and of Congress in passing it appears to have been precisely the oppositeto broaden rather than narrow the preference.
The Senate Civil Service Committee was told by the congressional sponsor of the measure that 'this bill takes away no existing veterans' preference, either by statute or Executive order, but it does strengthen, broaden and implement the veterans' preference policy heretofore in effect,' and that it would 'give legislative sanction to existing veterans' preference, to the rules and regulations in the executive branch of the Government. * * *.'
A member of the Civil Service Commission in explaining the bill to the Senate Committee called the proviso here involved the 'heart of the section,'
and stated that it 'was substantially the same' as the 1912 Act,
which as before pointed out, provided for an absolute veterans' retention preference without regard to length of service.
And in explaining the Bill on the floor of the House, the sponsor and active proponents of the measure explained it as strengthening and broadening veterans' preferences then embodied in statutes and executive orders.
Not only did the friends of the Veterans' Preference Act explain to the Senate Committee on Civil Service and to the Congress the broad preferences the Act would grant. Hostile witnesses graphically pointed out to the Senate Committee what they deemed would be the unfairness of the Act's effect if passed as written. One such witness representing the Civil Service Reform League said: 'I think you ought to give consideration to * * * retention of veterans in civil service regardless of length of service. I do not think it is fair, a veteran be retained in service who has been in the service 6 months as against a person who has been in the service 25 years. I believe some distinction might be made, otherwise you would do a grave injustice to those people who have long years of service in civil service.'
And another witness against the Bill pointed out that under it nonveterans would 'be the first to be laid off and the last to be taken on.'
Thus Congress passed the bil with full knowledge that the long standing absolute retention preferences of veterans would be embodied in the Act. Petitioner makes an appealing argument against this policy. But it is a policy adopted by Congress, and our responsibility is to interpret the Act, not to overrule the congressional policy.
Nothing has come to my attention that indicates to me a congressional purpose to grant to one more rights as to continuity of employment than to the other. The legislation as to both depended upon the same constitutional authoritythe War Power. I can see no reason to attribute to Congress an intention to guarantee public employment to a returning veteran regardless of the needs of the public service or to discriminate between equally deserving veterans. Compare Fishgold v. Sullivan Drydock & Repair Corp., 328 U.S. 275, 66 S.Ct. 1105, 90 L.Ed. 1230, 167 A.L.R. 110.
But I do not reach that question, because Subgroup A-1 does take account of efficiency. It gives preference to veterans unless their efficiency rating is less than 'good.' No specific mention of length of service is made. But while a classification which ignores all considerations both of efficiency and of length of service might be found unauthorized under the statutory scheme,
one which takes due account of efficiency, which is not wholly unrelated to length of service, well might be sustained. And in that event the Commission's judgment that veterans with efficiency ratings of 'good' or better should be preferred to all others could hardly be called arbitrary or in excess of the authority conferred.
It is true that when petitioner was separated from service there were some 61 veterans classified A-1 Plus, without efficiency ratings and in priority to himself.
But we are informed, and it is not disputed,
that 60 of these men now have received efficiency ratings of 'good,' and therefore fall into Group A-1 in any event. The other of the 61 has resigned. Hence we are told, and this also is not disputed, that any order of the District Court purporting to require petitioner's restoration would mean that he is entitled to displace one of those veterans.
Subgroup A3, Veterans with efficiency ratings lower than 'good.'
Subgroup A4, Nonveterans with efficiency ratings lower than 'good.' 5 Code Fed.Reg. (Supp.1945) § 12.303, now found in 5 Code Fed.Reg. (Supp.1947) § 20.3(a).
Hearings before House Committee on Military Affairs on H.R. 10132, 76th Cong., 3d Sess. 8082, 118, 235; 86 Cong.Rec. 11697.
The Act not only provides preferences for veterans but under certain circumstances grants preferences to veterans' wives, widows and mothers. § 2, 5 U.S.C. 851, as amended by Pub.L. No. 396, 80th Cong., 2d Sess., Jan. 19, 1948, 5 U.S.C.A. § 851. See H.R.Rep. No. 1289, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. 3.
5 Code Fed.Reg. (Supp.1943) §§ 12.30112.313. These regulations, like those attacked here, separated all civil service employees into different categories according to their tenure, with permanent employees having the highest retention status. Thus all permanent employees, regardless of veteran's preference and of efficiency rating, enjoyed priority over all employees with limited tenures.
Hearings before Senate Committee on Civil Service on S. 1762 and H.R. 4115, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. 89.
Three veterans' organizations collaborated with the legislative sponsors in drafting the Act. Hearings before Senate Committee on Civil Service on S. 1762 and H.R. 4115, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. 8. A representative of one of these organizations stated to the Committee: 'This measure gives to honorably discharged veterans of World War I and World War II, their widows, and the wives of disabled veterans who themselves are not qualified, preference in employment where Federal funds are disbursed. It provides, by law, a definite preference both in appointment and retention in Federal positions. While such a preference in many instances now exists by virtue of Executive orders and Civil Service Commission regulations, this bill gives such preference a permanent standing that cannot be changed except by congressional action. The bill, likewise, does not take away from the veteran any rights previously granted under any existing law, Executive order, civil-service rule, or regulation of any department of the Government, but prescribes by law additional preferences and confirms many now existing by regulation.' Id. at 4142.
Hearings before Senate Committee on Civil Service on S. 1762 and H.R. 4115, 78th Cong., 2d Sess. 3334.
It is worthy of note, however, that Congress, in recognition of hardships resulting from replacement of older government employees by veterans, hass passed Acts which grant special pensions to employees over 55 years of age who have worked for the Government for 25 years or more and who have been involuntarily separated from the service in reductions in force. 60 Stat. 939, 5 U.S.C.A. § 691(e); Pub.L. No. 426, 80th Cong., 2d Sess., Feb. 28, 1948, 5 U.S.C.A. § 691 et seq. See 90 Cong.Rec. 92019202, H.R. No. 2443, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. 1, S.Rep. No. 1678, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. 12.