Court Opinion

ID: 9486096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:37:53.188901+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:31.720282
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join Judge Randolph’s opinion, which persuasively defeats the argument that 31 U.S.C. § 732(f)(2) constitutes a separate source of jurisdiction for the GAO’s Personnel Appeals Board in discrimination cases. I write separately only to note the possibility that the Board’s General Counsel, appearing before us as amicus curiae, is making a somewhat different argument — though one that fails for many of the same reasons.
The alternative theory runs as follows: The General Accounting Office Personnel Act of 1980 (“GAOPA”), Pub.L. No. 96-191, 94 Stat. 27 (1980) (largely codified at 31 U.S.C. §§ 701-79), which extended the protections of Title VII to all GAO employees, gives such employees a special mechanism for administrative review of their employer’s actions; it directs them to the Personnel Appeals Board rather than to the EEOC or the MSPB, which are available for regular executive-branch employees. But § 732(f)(2) indicates that this substitution is the only way in which the GAOPA supplants the Title VII rights and remedies available to executive-branch employees. Thus, as executive-branch employees’ Title VII rights and remedies include the right to file a de novo civil action in district court if dissatisfied with an EEOC or MSPB decision (see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c); 5 U.S.C. § 7703), § 732(f)(2) implies a parallel right for GAO employees and forecloses the inference that review under § 755 is exclusive.
I note this argument only to reject it. It would take language considerably clearer than § 732(f)(2) to persuade me that the GAOPA lets GAO employees choose between appealing a Board decision to the Federal Circuit (for review under the rather deferential “substantial evidence” standard) and filing a civil action in federal district court (for a de novo determination). Indeed, Ramey’s view raises the possibility that the GAO would appeal a Board decision to the Federal Circuit even as its employee sought to reliti-gate the same case in district court. Far from compelling this peculiar result, the language of § 732(f)(2) lends itself more naturally to Judge Randolph’s interpretation.