Court Opinion

ID: 9472340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:56:56.731903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:52.422586
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Although I concur in that part of the majority opinion finding jurisdiction for this appeal, I am unable to do likewise for what I regard as the anomalous holding that Whaley was entitled to back pay for five and one-third months of nonwork because of procedural deficiency in his fully justified termination from the CETA Program in which he now and then had participated. I therefore respectfully dissent.
It seems to me that little more should be needed to demonstrate the incorrectness of *1475the Secretary’s decision than to state the pertinent facts even though there is more in that this Court is taking a position contra to well established authority.
Whaley was hired under the CETA Program in January 1975. During the next year and a half he was absent nearly 100 days. He was suspended three different times because of violation of rules relating to attendance, each of which apparently would have been a valid cause for termination. He had notice of these prior complaints on attendance yet the Secretary in his decision makes the startling statement that “the record does not indicate that, as bad as his overall attendance was, Mr. Whaley was ever warned about it or reprimanded for it.” Three suspensions would seem to be a crying-out rather than a mere indication. Surely on this record Whaley could not have been oblivious of the supervisory dissatisfaction with his attendance record nor of the reason for his ultimate termination when that occurred after his return from a vacation which he had extended by not reporting to work on July 3 and 11 in order to lengthen his vacation days.
After he learned of his termination he took no steps to challenge his status for fourteen months. The Secretary in what I can only regard as a tribute to bureaucratic ingenuity in dispensing the fisc to the detriment of the public, and after the case was remanded to him on April 8, 1982 with the admonition that before assessing back pay he should be satisfied and give his reasons vindicating any award of back pay, nevertheless seized upon the bizarre rationale that if termination notice had been properly given Whaley somehow could have hung onto the position he didn’t deserve until the end of the calendar year for a total of five and one-third months.
Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 98 S.Ct. 1042, 55 L.Ed.2d 252 (1978) had been on the books for four years at the time of the Secretary’s decision and although on its facts it is not directly applicable, its teaching and spirit would seem clearly to indicate that back pay as such was not authorized but only at best nominal damages if they were justified under all the circumstances. The record does not demonstrate any mental or emotional distress incurred by Whaley and, indeed, his fourteen months of inaction suggest the contrary. The only rationale for the award of the Secretary was' the bald assertion unsupported in the record that the CETA termination procedure would consume nearly a half a year.
Aside from Carey v. Piphus, I regard County of Monroe v. United States Department of Labor, 690 F.2d 1359 (11th Cir.1982), as directly contrary and indistinguishable from the present case. What the Secretary has done and this Court has approved is in the wording of Monroe awarding a windfall and allowing “the procedural tail to wag the substantive dog,” id. at 1362-63. Unfortunately, Monroe did not exist at the time of this court’s remand on April 8, 1982, and apparently although it had been on the books a part of a month before the Secretary’s decision he either was unaware of it or ignored it.
The majority opinion states that the right of which Whaley was deprived was the right to challenge his termination rather than the right to continue CETA employment. This is a fine distinction in view of the Secretary’s decision and, indeed, it is so fine it escapes me because the record demonstrates that his right to challenge the termination was an empty shell without substance. The majority opinion further observes that Whaley was not entitled to recover for any loss because of the termination itself. Yet that is exactly what the Secretary did. The inescapable consequence of the Secretary’s decision is that Whaley will be compensated just as though he had been performing his job without his usual absences. The meable circuitry of the process by which the Secretary reached his conclusion should be called what it is, merely a circumvention of the prohibition of back pay under Monroe and its seque-lae. I am unable to find either in the Secretary’s decision or the majority opinion any basis to believe that an award of back pay to Whaley will effectuate the purposes of the CETA program as required by law. See Commonwealth of Kentucky, Depart*1476ment of Human Resources v. Donovan, 704 F.2d 288, 296 (6th Cir.1983); Monroe, supra, at 1362-63; 20 C.F.R. § 676.91(c) (1980).
I also note that the majority opinion states the Secretary’s finding that the termination would have occurred sometime after July 21 was supported by substantial evidence and, therefore, must be affirmed. The problem is that the Secretary’s finding went farther than that and was that he would not have been finally terminated for a full five and one-third months. Even if we were to assume that somehow the process could have kept him on the public payroll for a short time, there is no support in the evidence whatsoever that this period would have been for nearly a half a year.
I can only regard this Court’s approval of the Secretary’s decision as an unfortunate invitation to persons in similar positions to engage in dilatory tactics to keep undeserved pay checks flowing to them. In this case $5,500 has no basis in fact or in law.