Opinion ID: 368290
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiffs' Remaining Contentions

Text: 24 Although we conclude that the decision by the Army here falls within the committed to agency discretion exception to reviewability, we still have the obligation, as mentioned earlier, to scrutinize the action taken in order to determine whether specific constitutional, statutory or regulatory dictates have been abridged. In their complaint, plaintiffs raise three specific violations of law, and we now consider each of them in turn. 25 First, plaintiffs contend that the RIFs were issued in contravention of 5 C.F.R. § 351.201, which is said to delimit the situations in which a RIF may legally be issued to a government employee. That regulation of the Civil Service Commission, however, allows the release of a government employee from employment when required by a reorganization. As defined in 5 C.F.R. § 351.203(g), reorganization means the planned elimination, addition, or redistribution of functions or duties in an organization. Elimination of the plaintiffs' jobs through the decision to contract out resulted from just such a reorganization, and is thus not assailable on this ground. Moreover, 5 C.F.R. § 351.201 merely describes the procedures to be utilized in decreasing the federal work force. The decision whether a particular position is to be preserved or abolished is for the agency to make. 30 26 Plaintiffs also assert that since many of the class members are veterans, they are protected from discharge by the various statutory and regulatory provisions granting preference in government employment to veterans. According to plaintiffs, these provisions create a reasonable expectation of continued employment or tenure, unless there is sufficient cause for removal. This due process property interest, the argument continues, is sufficiently strong to withstand the allegedly arbitrary, capricious and illegal actions by the Army that would deprive the plaintiffs of such rights. 27 The flaw in this argument is that it reads too much into the provisions granting preferences to veterans. Whatever property interest the members of the class may have, its substantive dimensions are defined by the law that created it. 31 Nothing in the civil service statute or regulations prohibits the government from abolishing positions held by veterans or other civil servants and contracting out the work previously performed by them. Indeed, as discussed above, 5 C.F.R. § 351.201 specifically allows the issuance of RIFs pursuant to a reorganization. Stripped of this purported property interest, plaintiffs' argument is no more than an attempt to secure judicial review of an action that is alleged to be arbitrary and capricious. But, as we have already held, such action is committed to agency discretion by law and is therefore unreviewable. 28 Finally, plaintiffs allege that the contracting out in this case constitutes an illegal personal service contract under the guidelines laid down in the Pellerzi Standards and the Mondello Supplement, promulgations that are intended to prevent the procuring of services by contract in such a manner that the contractor or his employee are in effect employees of the government. 32 Plaintiffs are precluded, however, from obtaining judicial review of this claim at this time because they failed to exhaust the elaborate administrative remedy that was available to them. 33