Opinion ID: 471037
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Federal Circuit Precedent

Text: 27 The government argues that, contrary to the panel's original decision, this court's decision in United States v. Connolly, 716 F.2d 882, 886 (Fed.Cir.1983) (in banc), mandates the result reached by the Claims Court and that we urge here. However, a careful reading of that case reveals that it mandates no such result. 28 First, in the section of the opinion the government quotes, section III, the court was addressing whether Connolly had no right under the Civil Service Reform Act to seek review of his dismissal in the Claims Court. Connolly, 716 F.2d at 886 (emphasis added). That is not, it bears repeating, the issue here. The court's discussion of that issue is replete with references to rights that were or were not granted by the CSRA: 29 The Reform Act ... deliberately precluded such review under that Act for probationary employees.... The statutory definition of employee denotes the only class of civil service workers entitled to procedural and appeal rights provided by the Act ... [C]ourts have concluded that probationary employees may not appeal adverse actions under the Act. 30 .... 31 We think that the legislative history of the Reform Act entirely forecloses the possibility that probationary employees have some sort of unspecified private right of action in the Claims Court under the Act to seek judicial review of their removals. 32 .... 33 ... [w]e find it incongruous to suppose that [a probationary employee] has an implied private right of action under the Civil Service Reform Act to seek judicial review of his dismissal. 34 Id. (emphasis added). It was in that context that the court concluded: Congress has decided against judicial review in the Reform Act, and we are not free to disturb that judgment. Id. (emphasis added). That conclusion was directed to whether the CSRA granted to probationary employees a cause of action under that act; the court's conclusion did not address whether the CSRA had repealed the cause of action which Congress had granted in the Tucker Act/Back Pay Act. 35 Second, even if the court's discussion could be construed to address a repeal of the Tucker Act/Back Pay Act, Connolly is distinguishable because the court in Connolly relied on language in the legislative history which specifically revealed the intent of Congress not to grant a cause of action under the CSRA to probationary employees like Connolly. Cf. Erika, 456 U.S. at 207, 211, 102 S.Ct. at 1653, 1655 (Medicare statute specifically precluded review in the Court of Claims; expressions of legislative intent unambiguously support Court's reading of the statutory language). The government has cited no legislative history of the CSRA expressing a comparable intent of Congress with respect to persons in the excepted service like Fausto.