Opinion ID: 790787
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Untimeliness of the Request for Counseling

Text: 20 Regardless of whether Britton could prevail on the merits of her claim for FMLA leave, we hold that this claim is procedurally barred because she did not request counseling within 180 days of the denial of her request for leave. We are not persuaded by Britton's argument that she never received a clear denial of her request from which that 180 days could be measured. 21 The Board and the Hearing Officer agreed that Britton had notice of the denial of her request by August 2000, at the latest. Hearing Officer King found that Garnett's comments on the April 18 leave application forms notified Britton that her claims for FMLA leave for April 13 and 14 were denied. Because Britton did not request counseling until May 11, 2001, more than 180 days after this notification, the Hearing Officer dismissed the FMLA claim. The Board found that the mid-April and August 2000 documents partially disapproved her request for FMLA leave—partially meaning that leave was denied for some of the requested dates and not others. Accordingly, the Board affirmed the dismissal of this claim. 22 We also affirm. The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 requires an aggrieved employee of the Architect to make a request for counseling . . . not later than 180 days after the date of the alleged violation. 2 U.S.C. § 1402(a) (2000). Here, the alleged violation is the denial of Britton's request for FMLA leave for April 13 and 14. The Board affirmed the Hearing Officer's factual finding that Britton was informed of the final denial of this FMLA request on or before she received the letter dated August 18, 2000. Although the timeliness issue arises as part of a motion to dismiss, pursuant to which a complainant's allegations are generally taken as true, the date Britton received notice is a jurisdictional fact; hence, it is subject to the substantial evidence standard of review ordinarily applied to facts found by the Board. See Banks v. United States, 314 F.3d 1304, 1307-08 (Fed.Cir.2003) (addressing the start date of the statute of limitations for a takings claim as a jurisdictional fact). The record contains substantial evidence that Britton knew of the denial of her request for FMLA leave in August 2000 or earlier. 23 Specifically, Garnett's notes on the Application for Leave forms clearly state that the requested leave is Not Approved. Implicitly, the Board found that only the request for leave for April 17 was Not Approved . . . pending documentation[,] and the April 13 and 14 requests were denied outright. This reading of the forms is eminently reasonable. The form that refers to April 13 does not contain any qualification of the denial of leave. The other form has the words pending documentation between lines about disapproval for the 17th and 14th. The note says Not approved with respect to the April 14 request and repeats Not approved for the April 17 request. By contrast, it includes the phrase pending documentation only once, directly under the words Not approved: 8 hours for 17th. This strongly suggests, to say the least, that pending documentation only applies to the April 17 request. Moreover, Britton admitted on direct examination before Hearing Officer King that she learned within two weeks of filing her applications that her April 13 and 14 requests were denied. 24 This conclusion is only bolstered by the August 18 letter. This letter informed Britton that her FMLA leave was starting on the date of the letter, August 18, 2000. By assigning this date as the start date of her leave, the Office of the Architect implicitly denied Britton's leave requests for earlier dates, specifically April 13 and 14, to the extent these requests were still outstanding. 25 The Board also noted Britton's arguments that the August 18 letter altered the time period of her FMLA eligibility and that the 180-day period should have started from the Architect's November 15, 2000 decision to reprimand her. By holding the FMLA claim time-barred, the Board necessarily rejected these positions. This rejection was proper; we see nothing in the August 18 letter that could conceivably have modified or restarted the 180-day time limit. 26 Because substantial evidence supports the Board's finding that Britton was notified of the denial of her requests on or before August 18, 2000, we affirm the dismissal of Britton's FMLA claim for failure to timely request counseling. 27