Court Opinion

ID: 9455007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:06:16.887551+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:24.837189
License: Public Domain

TAMM, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The majority once again violates the judicial cloister erected by the Administrative Procedure Act and rushes out, robes flying, into the forbidden area of administrative discretion to give kind assistance to the subject of what it feels to be highwayman tactics at the hands of the Civil Service Commission. Sensitive *1169to phantom defects in administrative action but insensitive to reality they turn their heads and cry “shame” at the same time avoiding the calling of the chorus of cases outlining the proper scope of judicial review of agency determinations. They shrug off the Commission’s findings that this wayward traveler has engaged in off-duty homosexual conduct and that he experiences periods of memory “blackout” while drinking after which he assumes or suspects that he has engaged in overt homosexual activity, in order to pursue exotic ideas lurking in the legal underbrush. Picking their way across a quagmire of rhetoric they engage in casuistic reasoning, clever but false, to chide the Commission and frustrate its delegated function.
This court plainly held in the case of Hargett v. Summerfield, 100 U.S.App.D.C. 85, 88, 243 F.2d 29, 32 (1957), that “employee removal and discipline are almost entirely matters of executive agency discretion,” and “that, so long as there [is] substantial compliance with applicable procedures * * * the administrative determination [is] not reviewable as to the wisdom or good judgment of the department * * * exercising [its] discretion.” (Citations omitted.) I have felt constrained to follow this view time and again, see, e. g., dissenting opinion in Meehan v. Macy, U.S.App.D.C. (No. 20,812, decided May 12, 1969) (en banc), although in so doing I remain a vox clamantis in deserto. With regard to this case I am convinced that the record substantially supports the action of the Commission in dismissing this man in order to promote the efficiency of the service and accordingly, I would affirm. To do otherwise would implicate me in the setting of precedent for the proposition that off-duty homosexual conduct, coupled with a capacity for “blackingout” while intoxicated, bears no real relationship to the functioning of an efficient service within a government agency. Homosexuals, sadly enough, do not leave their emotions at Lafayette Square and regardless of their spiritual destinies they still present targets for public reproach and private extortion. I believe this record supports the finding that this individual presents more than a potential risk in this regard and that his termination will serve the efficiency of the service. Despite the billows of puffery that continue to float out of recent opinions on this subject, I believe that the theory that homosexual conduct is not in any way related to the efficiency and effectiveness of governmental business is not an evil theory— just a very unrealistic one.