Court Opinion

ID: 9455692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:29:43.565586+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:41.575623
License: Public Domain

ALDISERT, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Because appellant submitted his request for reopening after receiving his order for induction, he had the burden first of demonstrating a change in status resulting from circumstances over which he had no control, 32 C.F.R. § 1625.2, *12and further of presenting information not previously considered by the local board which would justify a change in classification. A failure to establish these elements is a failure to establish an entitlement to reopening.
As I read the regulations, a change in status beyond the registrant’s control is a condition precedent to the board’s obligation to examine the information newly presented. The regulations specify that the “local board [must] ■ first specifically [find] there has been a change * * * over which the registrant had no control.’’ Appellant did not satisfy that burden. Indeed, the district court found that the change in status was within his control, and this court has agreed.
In my view, we need go no further. In Hunt v. Local Board No. 197, 423 F.2d 576 (3 Cir. 1970), this court, confronted with the denial of a pre-induction request for reopening, remanded to the district court for a determination whether a prima facie case for reopening had been established. I dissented on the grounds that the district court was not empowered, in a pre-induction setting, to make such an inquiry and that the registrant had the right to an administrative appeal irrespective of the presence of a prima facie case. In the instant case, however, no such pre-induction restrictions on judicial review apply. And the court has found as a matter of law that appellant was not entitled to a reopening because he failed to demonstrate that the change in status was beyond his control. Thus we need not reach the questions of a prima facie case or of the right to an administrative appeal as we did in Hunt.
Having decided as a legal matter that appellant did not qualify to have his file reopened since the circumstances of the changed status were within his control, we have said in effect that no determination other than that reached by the local board could reasonably have been made under the uncontested facts. This decision alone should control our disposition here.