Opinion ID: 4582154
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Delgado’s Protected Disclosures

Text: The first contested issue is whether Delgado made a protected disclosure. We held in Delgado I that he had properly alleged a protected disclosure in his filings with the Oﬃce of Special Counsel and before the Board. Delgado alleged that he met with two supervisors on February 4, 2014 and reported to them his belief that a fellow agent (Labno) had committed perjury in a federal criminal trial where Delgado, Labno, and other agents had testified. The testimony concerned an attempted undercover drug buy in which Labno was robbed by the suspected drug dealers. Labno fired shots at the fleeing robbers, and whether his shots were justified was disputed in the trial of one suspected (then convicted) dealer. The Administrative Judge and Board had held that Delgado had not al- leged a protected disclosure because he had not told his supervisors that he definitely believed Labno had acted with the mens rea necessary for perjury, and his disclosure left open the possibility that Labno had been honestly mistaken on some key details in his testimony relevant to whether the shooting was justified. 880 F.3d at 921. No. 19-2239 7 As we explained in Delgado I, the relevant language of the Act does not require a disclosure to assert a violation of law as definitively as the Board had required of Delgado. The Act protects a disclosure that the employee “reasonably believes evidences” a violation of the law. 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8). Our decision squarely rejected the Board’s rationale for finding that Delgado’s disclosure was not protected. Under paragraph (b)(8), a whistleblower need not assert that he has definitive proof of a violation of law, such that he is confident that all innocent explanations can be refuted. 880 F.3d at 922. Under the federal Act, whistleblowers are protected even if their disclosures fall short of a complete investigative report that leaves no room for disagreement or rebuttal. They are protected even if a more complete investigation or hearing ultimately shows that their suspicions were not correct. The Act leaves federal managers and supervisors with the power and responsibility to choose whether to investigate and ultimately to decide whether reported suspicions were correct. What the Act prohibits is retaliation—punishment—for employees who speak up about their reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing. After all, managers in federal agencies are supposed to react to and investigate relevant information about their agencies even if—especially if—important facts are not yet known. The Oﬃce of Special Counsel itself is supposed to be in the business of conducting investigations. It should not merely wait for intrepid employees to conduct their own investigations, to prepare complete and definitive investigative reports, delivered to the Oﬃce tied up in ribbons. In Delgado I, we concluded: “Delgado’s submission to the Board makes clear that he informed his ATF supervisors that Labno might 8 No. 19-2239 well have committed perjury and that an investigation was called for. That is suﬃcient for the disclosure to be protected under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8).” 880 F.3d at 922–23; accord, e.g., Drake v. Agency for International Development, 543 F.3d 1377, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (reversing Board’s finding that employee’s disclosure was not protected because it did not definitively show violation of law). In holding that, contrary to the Board’s view, Delgado had suﬃciently alleged a protected disclosure in his administrative filings, we did not and could not find that he had proven it. That was a question for the evidentiary hearing after our remand. One can imagine, after all, that the ATF supervisors might have testified credibly that Delgado made no such disclosure. That is not what happened. Delgado’s supervisors agreed in substance with his account of his disclosure. They took his report seriously enough that they relayed it to the ATF’s Special Agent in Charge in Chicago and to the United States Attorney’s Oﬃce. There was no factual dispute material to whether his February 4, 2014 disclosure was protected. One would think, therefore, that the question of protected disclosure would not have been diﬃcult on remand. To our amazement, however, the Administrative Judge ignored our analysis and decision on this issue in Delgado I. She repeated at considerable length her earlier analysis, which the Board had adopted and which we had reversed, asserting that the disclosure was not protected because Delgado had not claimed definitively that Labno had committed perjury. She also conducted a detailed (but oddly mistaken) evaluation of the details of the unsuccessful controlled buy in Chicago and the shooting to decide whether Labno had actually committed perjury or whether the discrepancies between his testimony No. 19-2239 9 and other agents’ were more likely the result of honest diﬀerences in memory and perspective. See Short App. 44–48. (We say oddly mistaken because the AJ said four times in her opinion that the events occurred at night, a fact she used to discount Delgado’s observations and to add to the risk of honest mistakes. Everyone else agrees that the events occurred in the middle of the day.) The Administrative Judge’s treatment of this issue was an obvious, unexplained, and astonishing example of administrative obduracy. Under the Act itself, and under our decision in Delgado I, the role of the Administrative Judge was not to decide years after the event whether she was dealing with perjury or honest mistakes. The possibility of honest mistakes was well known to everyone involved. They were all experienced law enforcement oﬃcers, and the diﬀerence between deliberate lies and honest mistakes is always an issue when perjury is possible. That possibility did not bar protection for Delgado’s report. (And for what it’s worth, Delgado had a clear view of the relevant events, in broad daylight, and Labno’s version of events was contradicted by other agents as well as by Delgado, and served to justify Labno’s shooting of his firearm in controversial circumstances. The facts known to Delgado did not definitively prove perjury, but they provided reasonable evidence to believe that it occurred and that further investigation would have been warranted.) In finding that Delgado’s disclosure was not protected, the Administrative Judge also relied in part on the fact that there had been a history of friction between Delgado and Labno, and she wrote that the Whistleblower Protection Act was not intended as a vehicle for resolving such conflicts. That portion 10 No. 19-2239 of the AJ’s decision reflected another legal error. The Act provides specifically: “A disclosure shall not be excluded from subsection (b)(8) because of the employee’s or applicant’s motive for making the disclosure.” 5 U.S.C. § 2302(f)(1)(C). Again, the central issue under the Act is not the motive for a disclosure or friction between employees, but whether managers retaliated against an employee for making a protected disclosure. In Baez-Sanchez v. Barr, we summarized the basic rules here: Under the rule of law, an agency that is unhappy with a court’s decision on judicial review may appeal further or perhaps seek legislation to change the applicable law for future cases. The agency may not pretend the court did not make its decision. See 947 F.3d at 1036. In more doctrinal terms, the agency here disregarded the law of the case, which “prohibits a lower court from reconsidering on remand an issue expressly or impliedly decided by a higher court absent certain circumstances.” United States v. Adams, 746 F.3d 734, 744 (7th Cir. 2014), quoting United States v. Polland, 56 F.3d 776, 779 (7th Cir. 1995). The law-of-the-case doctrine applies to judicial review of administrative decisions. Wilder v. Apfel, 153 F.3d 799, 803 (7th Cir. 1998), citing Chicago & Nw. Transp. Co. v. United States, 574 F.2d 926, 929– 30 (7th Cir. 1978), citing in turn Morand Bros. Beverage Co. v. NLRB, 204 F.2d 529, 532–33 (7th Cir. 1953). The law-of-thecase doctrine is a corollary of the mandate rule, which “requires a lower court”—here, an administrative tribunal—“to adhere to the commands of a higher court on remand.” Adams, 746 F.3d at 744; accord, Baez-Sanchez, 947 F.3d at 1036. No. 19-2239 11 The law-of-the-case doctrine and mandate rule are not inflexible. They may bend in “suﬃciently compelling circumstances,” such as “subsequent factual discoveries or changes in the law.” Carmody v. Bd. of Trustees, 893 F.3d 397, 407–08 (7th Cir. 2018), citing EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 417 F.3d 789, 796 (7th Cir. 2005). The Administrative Judge did not, however, rely on any new evidence or intervening changes in law. Instead, she repeated her earlier and erroneous analysis, as if we had not ruled. We did not remand so that the AJ could flout our order. Delgado’s February 4, 2014 disclosure that he suspected perjury by Labno was a protected disclosure under § 2302(b)(8). We must note here a procedural complication. The AJ actually decided not one but two cases involving Delgado, which the parties call the 2014 Case and the 2018 Case. The 2014 Case is the same one that we remanded before, stemming from Delgado’s 2014 complaint to the Oﬃce of Special Counsel. While his first petition for judicial review was pending, Delgado filed a new complaint with the Oﬃce of Special Counsel that has become the 2018 Case. In the 2018 Case, Delgado asserted that he had been retaliated against again when he was denied promotions he sought in 2016. The AJ issued separate written decisions on the two cases on successive days, and Delgado’s current petition for judicial review challenges both. The treatment of the protected disclosure issue was not any better with Delgado’s 2018 Case. The Administrative Judge’s separate order on the 2018 Case repeated her adher- ence to the reasoning we had reversed in Delgado I. She held that Delgado had made no protected disclosure. The AJ re12 No. 19-2239 fused to follow the law of the case, making her 2018 Case decision arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law for the reasons that also apply to the 2014 Case. There are a couple of additional wrinkles to the 2018 Case. The Administrative Judge focused on Delgado’s email on No- vember 13, 2016 to Attorney General Lynch, the Oﬃce of Inspector General, and several members of Congress. Delgado sent that email after the key alleged acts of retaliation he alleged: denial of promotions for which Delgado interviewed in August and October 2016. The AJ found that the timing prevented this later disclosure from being a protected disclosure under the statute. Short App. 38. That reliance on sequence is usually reasonable in evaluating retaliation claims. The problem here is that Administrative Judge erred in thinking that Delgado’s 2018 Case was lim- ited to the November 13, 2016 email. Throughout 2014, 2015, and 2016, Delgado had been emailing and speaking with various ASACs (assistant special agents in charge) and SACs (special agents in charge) before his November 13, 2016 email. Those earlier disclosures were protected under the Act just like his original disclosure on February 4, 2014. The decisionmakers in the 2016 promotion denials knew about the larger history of Delgado’s earlier disclosures. To the extent the AJ held otherwise, that holding was also arbitrary and capricious. It failed to come to grips with Delgado’s actual allegations and evidence.2 2 Delgado’s November 2016 email and his administrative complaints also alleged some additional, more recent incidents of suspected wrongdoing within the agency. The AJ found that those disclosures were not protected, and Delgado has not pursued those matters before us. No. 19-2239 13