Court Opinion

ID: 9458370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:50:33.347431+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:44.787683
License: Public Domain

ROBB, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I am not persuaded by the explanations and disavowals in the majority opinion on petition for rehearing. Accordingly, I adhere to my dissent, while adding a few words.
In its opinion denying rehearing the majority taxes the government for failing to discuss Schwartz v. Covington, 341 F.2d 537 (9th Cir. 1965) in the petition for rehearing. The point is not well taken. In the first place the original majority opinion did not rely on Schwartz v. Covington as a major prop for its conclusions; on the contrary, the case was accorded only fleeting mention in footnotes 21 and 22. What is more important, the majority’s present reliance on the case is misplaced. The majority now says that in “Schwartz a stay of the petitioner’s pending discharge had been issued by the District Court, at the time petitioner’s administrative appeal on the merits was in process, as in Mrs. Murray’s case.” There was no “administra*887tive appeal on the merits * * * in process” in the Schwartz case. The only military remedy then available to Schwartz was review before the Army Board for Correction of Military Records pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 1552; and this court has held that consideration by this Board is not a part of “the administrative process which precedes finality”. Ogden v. Zuekert, 111 U.S.App.D.C. 398, 401, 298 F.2d 312, 315 (1961). In other words, Schwartz had exhausted his administrative remedies before he went to court.
In my judgment the doctrine announced by the majority will make the district court the housekeeper and the proctor of the federal civil service. This I think is wrong.