Court Opinion

ID: 9381843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-24 00:00:28.216058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:34.877116
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-40043    Document: 00516687563         Page: 1    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

           United States Court of Appeals
                for the Fifth Circuit                               United States Court of Appeals
                                                                             Fifth Circuit

                                                                           FILED
                                                                     March 23, 2023
                                 No. 22-40043                         Lyle W. Cayce
                                                                           Clerk

   Feds for Medical Freedom; Local 918, American
   Federation of Government Employees; Highland
   Engineering, Incorporated; Raymond A. Beebe, Jr.; John
   Armbrust; et al.,

                                                          Plaintiffs—Appellees,

                                     versus

   Joseph R. Biden, Jr., in his official capacity as President of the United
   States; The United States of America; Pete Buttigieg, in
   his official capacity as Secretary of Transportation; Department of
   Transportation; Janet Yellen, in her official capacity as Secretary
   of Treasury; et al.,

                                                     Defendants—Appellants.

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of Texas
                           USDC No. 3:21-CV-356

   Before Richman, Chief Judge, and Jones, Smith, Barksdale,
   Stewart, Dennis, Elrod, Southwick, Haynes, Graves,
   Higginson, Willett, Ho, Duncan, Engelhardt, Oldham,
   and Wilson, Circuit Judges.

                                       1
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563             Page: 2      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                        No. 22-40043

   Andrew S. Oldham, Circuit Judge, joined by Jones, Smith,
   Barksdale, Elrod, Willett, Ho, Duncan, Engelhardt, and
   Wilson, Circuit Judges: ∗
           The primary question presented is whether we have jurisdiction over
   pre-enforcement challenges to President Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal
   employees. We do. On the merits, we affirm the district court’s order.
                                              I.
           On September 9, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order
   14043, which generally required all federal employees to be vaccinated.
   Employees who didn’t comply would face termination. He also issued
   Executive Order 14042, imposing the same requirements and punishments
   for federal contractors.
           Feds for Medical Freedom is a non-profit organization with over
   6,000 members employed by numerous federal agencies and contractors.
   Feds for Medical Freedom, along with a chapter of the American Federation
   of Government Employees and more than 50 individual plaintiffs, sued for
   declaratory and injunctive relief against the enforcement of both mandates.
           Plaintiffs raised several constitutional and statutory claims. First, they
   asserted constitutional objections. They argued that the President did not
   have inherent Article II authority to issue either mandate. And any purported
   congressional delegation of such power violated either the major questions
   doctrine or the non-delegation doctrine. Second, they claimed both mandates
   were arbitrary, capricious, and otherwise not in accordance with law under
   the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). And the contractor mandate

           ∗
             Judge Willett joins all except Part VI. Judge Douglas was not a member
   of the court when this case was submitted to the court en banc and did not participate in
   this decision.

                                              2
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563          Page: 3    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   violated the APA because it was not in accordance with law. Finally, they
   sought relief under the Declaratory Judgment Act (“DJA”).
          The day after filing their complaint, plaintiffs sought preliminary
   injunctions against both mandates. The district court declined to enjoin the
   contractor mandate because it was already the subject of a nationwide
   injunction. But it enjoined the employee mandate on January 21, 2022. The
   Government timely appealed that injunction.
          On an expedited appeal, a divided panel of our court vacated the
   injunction. See Feds for Medical Freedom v. Biden, 30 F.4th 503 (5th Cir. 2022).
   The panel majority held “that the [Civil Service Reform Act of 1978
   (“CSRA”)] precluded the district court’s jurisdiction. Accordingly, the
   plaintiffs’ claim for preliminary injunctive relief fails because they have not
   shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. We do not reach the
   parties’ arguments regarding the other requirements for a preliminary
   injunction.” Id. at 511. Judge Barksdale dissented. We granted
   rehearing en banc, vacating the panel opinion. See Feds for Medical Freedom v.
   Biden, 37 F.4th 1093 (5th Cir. 2022).
                                           II.
          “Jurisdiction is always first.” Carswell v. Camp, 54 F.4th 307, 310 (5th
   Cir. 2022) (quotation omitted). Congress gave federal district courts
   jurisdiction over “all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or
   treaties of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 1331. It’s undisputed that
   plaintiffs’ claims arise under federal law, both constitutional and statutory.
   It’s also undisputed that the CSRA nowhere expressly repeals district courts’
   § 1331 jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ claims. The Government’s contention,
   however, is that the CSRA implicitly repeals § 1331 jurisdiction over
   plaintiffs’ claims.

                                           3
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563           Page: 4    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

           Implicit jurisdiction-stripping turns on whether it’s “fairly
   discernible” from the statutory scheme that Congress silently took away the
   jurisdiction that § 1331 explicitly conferred. “To determine whether it is
   ‘fairly discernible’ that Congress precluded district court jurisdiction over
   petitioners’ claims, we examine the CSRA’s text, structure, and purpose.”
   Elgin v. Dep’t of Treasury, 567 U.S. 1, 10 (2012) (citations omitted). We (A)
   begin with the CSRA’s text and structure. Then we (B) discuss the statute’s
   purpose. Then we (C) hold that the CSRA does not apply to the plaintiffs’
   claims and hence does not implicitly displace § 1331 jurisdiction.
                                          A.
           We begin with the CSRA’s text and structure. The CSRA’s
   “statutory framework provides graduated procedural protections depending
   on an [employment] action’s severity.” Kloeckner v. Solis, 568 U.S. 41, 44
   (2012). Two parts of that graduated procedural framework are central to this
   case.
           The first is codified at Chapter 23. See 5 U.S.C. §§ 2301 et seq. Chapter
   23 is the bottom of the CSRA’s pyramid. It governs the least severe
   employment actions the Government can take and provides concomitantly
   fewer procedural protections and remedies for federal employees aggrieved
   by those employment actions.
           Specifically, Chapter 23 prohibits federal employers from using a
   “prohibited personnel practice,” id. § 2302(a)(1), (b), to take a certain
   “personnel action,” id. § 2302(a)(2)(A). Chapter 23’s “prohibited
   personnel practice[s]” include various forms of discrimination (race, age,
   sex, &c.), nepotism, and retaliation for whistleblowing. See id. § 2302(b)(1)
   (discrimination), (b)(7) (nepotism), (b)(8) (whistleblowing). The triggering
   “personnel action[s]” are limited to the following twelve things:
           (i) an appointment;

                                           4
Case: 22-40043         Document: 00516687563               Page: 5       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

           (ii) a promotion;
           (iii) an action under chapter 75 of this title or other disciplinary
           or corrective action;
           (iv) a detail, transfer, or reassignment;
           (v) a reinstatement;
           (vi) a restoration;
           (vii) a reemployment;
           (viii) a performance evaluation under chapter 43 of this title or
           under title 38;
           (ix) a decision concerning pay, benefits, or awards, or
           concerning education or training if the education or training
           may reasonably be expected to lead to an appointment,
           promotion, performance evaluation, or other action described
           in this subparagraph;
           (x) a decision to order psychiatric testing or examination;
           (xi) the implementation or enforcement of any nondisclosure
           policy, form, or agreement; and
           (xii) any other significant change in duties, responsibilities, or
           working conditions;
   Id. § 2302(a)(2)(A). Chapter 23’s personnel actions obviously do not include
   severe measures such as demotions or terminations. 1

           1
             Section 2302(a)(2)(A)(iii) (“romanette iii”) cross-references “an action under
   chapter 75 of this title.” Chapter 75 does not use the phrase “personnel action” but instead
   uses the phrase “an action.” 5 U.S.C. §§ 7502, 7512 (subchapter titles); see also id.
   § 7513(a), (b), (d), (e) (referring to “an action” taken against a federal employee). By virtue
   of romanette iii’s cross-reference, “personnel action” includes both a Chapter 23
   personnel action and a Chapter 75 action. Throughout this opinion, we use “Chapter 23

                                                 5
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563             Page: 6      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                        No. 22-40043

           Given that Chapter 23 applies only to relatively mild personnel
   actions, Chapter 23’s review mechanisms are also relatively modest. When a
   federal employee suffers a Chapter 23 “personnel action” based on a
   “prohibited personnel practice,” the employee can file an allegation with the
   Office of Special Counsel (“OSC”). Id. §§ 1214(a), 2302. The OSC, in turn,
   can terminate the matter or refer it to the Merit Systems Protection Board
   (“MSPB”). Id. § 1214(a)(2) (termination), (b) (referral). The employee can
   then seek judicial review of the MSPB’s final order in the United States
   Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Id. §§ 1214(c), 7703(b)(1)(A).
   Judicial review for Chapter 23 personnel actions is extremely limited,
   however. As then-Judge Scalia explained: “judicial scrutiny [is] limited, at
   most, to insuring compliance with the statutory requirement that the OSC
   perform an adequate inquiry.” Carducci v. Regan, 714 F.2d 171, 175 (D.C. Cir.
   1983) (quotation omitted).
           The second part of the CSRA’s graduated procedural framework is
   codified at Chapter 75. See 5 U.S.C. §§ 7501 et seq. Chapter 75 forms the top
   of the CSRA’s pyramid and governs the most-severe employment actions—
   such as suspensions, reductions in pay, and terminations. Id. §§ 7502,
   7512(1)–(5). When the Government proposes a suspension of fourteen days
   or less, the covered employee is entitled to notice, the opportunity to
   respond, the right to an attorney, and the right to a written decision. Id.
   § 7503(b)(1)–(4). When the Government proposes any other Chapter 75
   action, the covered employee receives these same protections, id. § 7513(b),

   personnel actions” to refer to the non-Chapter-75, less-severe employment actions listed
   in § 2302. We use “Chapter 75 personnel actions” or “Chapter 75 actions” to refer to the
   more-severe employment actions such as demotion and termination listed in § 7512. And
   unless context dictates otherwise, we use “personnel actions” or “CSRA-covered
   personnel actions” to include any employment actions covered by the CSRA.

                                              6
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563           Page: 7     Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   and can also appeal to the MSPB, id. § 7513(d), and to the Federal Circuit,
   id. § 7703(b)(1)(A).
          Where a covered employee challenges a covered personnel action, the
   CRSA’s review mechanisms are “exclusive.” Elgin, 567 U.S. at 13–14. Take
   for example McAullife v. Rice, 966 F.2d 979 (5th Cir. 1992). There, a CSRA-
   covered employee challenged the Chapter-75-covered termination of her
   employment—but she tried to do it in the Western District of Texas under
   the APA, rather than in the MSPB and Federal Circuit under the CSRA. See
   id. at 979. We rejected the attempt because the CSRA provides the exclusive
   jurisdictional (and remedial) font for covered federal employees when they are
   challenging CSRA-covered personnel actions. See ibid.
          The italicized clause is very important for two reasons. First, the
   Supreme Court has been clear that the CSRA eliminates § 1331 jurisdiction
   only for personnel actions covered by the CSRA. For example, in United
   States v. Fausto, 484 U.S. 439 (1988), the Court said the CSRA “displays a
   clear congressional intent to deny the excluded employees the protections of
   Chapter 75—including judicial review—for personnel action covered by that
   chapter.” Id. at 447 (emphasis added). Likewise in Elgin, the Court repeatedly
   limited its holding to the CSRA’s jurisdictional effects on “a covered
   employee challeng[ing] a covered action,” 567 U.S. at 13; “a covered
   employee’s appeal of a covered action,” ibid.; and “a covered employee
   [attempting to] challenge a covered employment action first in a district
   court,” id. at 14 (all emphases added); see also id. at 10, 20–21 (reiterating the
   limitation). The Court has never suggested—much less held—that the
   CSRA implicitly strips § 1331 jurisdiction over federal employees’ claims
   outside the CSRA’s covered personnel actions. See Bosco v. United States, 931
   F.2d 879, 883 (Fed. Cir. 1991) (“The Supreme Court did not rule that the
   CSRA provided the only means of judicial review of any actions affecting
   federal employees, but rather that it was the only means of review as to the

                                           7
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563          Page: 8    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   types of adverse personnel action specifically covered by the CSRA . . . .”
   (emphases in original)).
          Second, the Court has expressly said the opposite—that the CSRA
   does nothing to affect jurisdiction outside of its covered personnel actions:
          Not all personnel actions are covered by this [CSRA] system.
          For example, there are no provisions for appeal of either
          suspensions for 14 days or less or adverse actions against
          probationary employees. In addition, certain actions by
          supervisors against federal employees, such as wiretapping,
          warrantless searches, or uncompensated takings, would not be
          defined as ‘personnel actions’ within the statutory scheme.
   Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367, 385 n.28 (1983) (citations omitted). In
   accordance with this express command, federal courts across the country
   have time and again held that the CSRA does not strip § 1331 jurisdiction
   when federal employees challenge something other than a CSRA-covered
   personnel action. For example, installing a hidden camera in the women’s
   changing area of a VA medical center is not a CSRA-covered personnel action
   and hence can be challenged outside the CSRA. See Gustafson v. Adkins, 803
   F.3d 883, 888 (7th Cir. 2015) (“Under the plain language of the statute, the
   term ‘personnel action’ does not encompass Adkins’s conduct . . . [of]
   installing the hidden camera . . . .”). Same with assaulting a federal employee.
   See Orsay v. DOJ, 289 F.3d 1125, 1131 (9th Cir. 2002), abrogated on other
   grounds by Millbrook v. United States, 569 U.S. 50 (2013) (“Claxton’s alleged
   aiming of a loaded weapon at Appellants does not fit any of the CSRA’s
   definitions of ‘personnel action.’ Consequently, the CSRA does not bar
   Appellants’ [Federal Tort Claims Act] claims . . . .”); Brock v. United States,
   64 F.3d 1421, 1425 (9th Cir. 1995) (sexual assault). Same with libeling a
   federal employee. See Gutierrez v. Flores, 543 F.3d 248, 253–54 (5th Cir.
   2008) (holding the CSRA does not apply or strip jurisdiction because “this

                                          8
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563          Page: 9    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                   No. 22-40043

   case does not involve . . . any adverse employment action”). And same with
   illegally searching a federal employee’s home. See Collins v. Bender, 195 F.3d
   1076, 1080 (9th Cir. 1999) (“[W]e do not believe that Congress intended to
   deputize government supervisors as chieftains of security forces that police
   the private lives of their employees subject only to some administrative
   oversight, and we do not believe that Congress meant to shoehorn into the
   CSRA every odd occurrence where a supervisor forms and leads such a
   renegade posse.”).
          Consider for example the Third Circuit’s recent decision in
   Manivannan v. DOE, 42 F.4th 163 (3d Cir. 2022). In that case, DOE
   attempted to fire a CSRA-covered scientist and then allowed him to resign.
   Manivannan sued DOE. Some of his claims challenged CSRA-covered
   personnel actions and hence could be brought under only the CSRA (and not
   under § 1331). Id. at 173 (holding employee could challenge DOE’s internal
   investigation only under the CSRA because that investigation constituted a
   CSRA-covered “significant change in working conditions”). But some of his
   claims were not covered by the CSRA and hence could be brought in the
   district court under § 1331. For example, DOE’s “decision to disclose an
   employee’s records to state prosecutors is not an adverse action” under
   Chapter 75 or a “personnel action” under Chapter 23. Ibid. Same with
   DOE’s conversion of Manivannan’s personal property:
          Even construing the CSRA’s language broadly, we fail to see
          how an employer’s alleged conversion of a former employee’s
          personal property, unrelated to the latter’s federal
          employment, constitutes a ‘disciplinary or corrective action,’
          5 U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(iii), a ‘significant change in duties,
          responsibilities,    or      working       conditions,’     id.
          § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii), or any other employment action set out
          in the statute.
   Id. at 174.

                                         9
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563          Page: 10   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                   No. 22-40043

          In short, the text and structure of the CSRA creates a decades-old,
   well-established, bright-line rule: Federal employees must bring challenges
   to CSRA-covered personnel actions through the CSRA, but they remain free
   to bring other, non-CSRA challenges under the district courts’ general § 1331
   jurisdiction.
                                        B.
          The CSRA’s purpose reinforces this conclusion. The CSRA was
   enacted “to replace the haphazard arrangements for administrative and
   judicial review of personnel action, part of the ‘outdated patchwork of
   statutes and rules built up over almost a century.’” Fausto, 484 U.S. at 444
   (quoting S. Rep. No. 95-969, at 3 (1978)). The old system created different
   grievance rights for federal employees in different agencies; it entailed
   labyrinthine and uncertain administrative review mechanisms that
   disincentivized managers from taking disciplinary action even when clearly
   warranted. See id. at 444–45 (citing S. Rep. No. 95-969, at 9 (1978)). The
   CSRA “replaced the patchwork system with an integrated scheme of
   administrative and judicial review, designed to balance the legitimate
   interests of the various categories of federal employees with the needs of
   sound and efficient administration.” Id. at 445 (citing S. Rep. No. 95-969,
   at 4 (1978)).
          Thus, the CSRA’s purpose is to streamline and integrate the review
   system for federal employees’ challenges to personnel actions. It does nothing
   to promote that purpose to interpret the CSRA as stripping § 1331
   jurisdiction over disputes beyond CSRA-covered personnel actions. If
   anything, it would disserve the CSRA’s purposes to rewrite it, as the
   Government requests, to strip jurisdiction over every claim any federal
   employee could ever bring. That’s because the MSPB has expertise in the
   byzantine procedures for taking and challenging CSRA-covered personnel

                                        10
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 11   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   actions, but it knows nothing about peephole cameras and wiretaps and
   searches. It would substantially burden the MSPB to task it with such non-
   CSRA matters. And more to the point, if Congress wanted to make the CSRA
   process applicable to every claim an employee could ever bring against a
   federal employer, it could’ve said so. That would’ve made the CSRA less
   complicated by obviating all the personnel-action limitations in Chapter 23
   and Chapter 75—a road Congress plainly did not take. See SAS Inst., Inc. v.
   Iancu, 138 S. Ct. 1348, 1357 (2018) (“We need not and will not invent an
   atextual explanation for Congress’s drafting choices when the statute’s own
   terms supply an answer.” (quotation omitted)).
          The Government offers two responses. First, the Government claims
   that allowing plaintiffs to bring suits in district court would undermine the
   CSRA’s purpose of creating “an integrated scheme of review.” Gov’t En
   Banc Br. 22. The theory appears to be that federal employees can’t otherwise
   sue in district court, so it would undermine the integration of the MSPB and
   the Federal Circuit to allow this case to get past the CSRA’s roadblocks. This
   contention is quite odd. As the Government well knows, one of the most
   common suits brought by federal employees is the so-called “mixed case.”
   It’s so-called because the employee mixes CSRA-covered claims (for
   example, for CSRA-governed Chapter 75 violations) with non-CSRA claims
   (for example, for sex discrimination under Title VII). See Kloeckner, 568 U.S.
   at 44–48 (describing mixed cases). Both Congress and the Supreme Court
   say that federal employees are free to bring their mixed cases in district court
   without ever dealing with the MSPB or the Federal Circuit in any way. See 5
   U.S.C. § 7703(b)(2); Kloeckner, 568 U.S. at 50 (holding “mixed cases shall
   be filed in district court”); see also Punch v. Bridenstine, 945 F.3d 322, 324–25
   (5th Cir. 2019) (holding “the employee [bringing a mixed case] need not start
   with the MSPB—or take any of the roads running from it”—and instead can

                                          11
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563              Page: 12   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                       No. 22-40043

   file in district court). Thus, it’s simply not true that federal employees face
   an “integrated” grievance system that never includes district court.
          Second, the Government claims that it would create a “gaping
   loophole” if employees could see a CSRA-covered personnel action coming
   down the pike and then race to district court to invoke § 1331 jurisdiction
   before it otherwise disappears. Gov’t En Banc Br. 22. Of course it’s our job
   to interpret the words Congress actually wrote, not to entertain such policy
   arguments for writing the CSRA differently. See, e.g., Domino’s Pizza, Inc. v.
   McDonald, 546 U.S. 470, 479 (2006). And in any event, the Government’s
   policy concerns misunderstand the nature of plaintiffs’ claims. In a case like
   this one, where plaintiffs are not challenging a CSRA-covered personnel
   action, § 1331 jurisdiction would not disappear even if the Government took
   CSRA-covered personnel actions against them. That’s why, for example,
   Manivannan could litigate his non-CSRA claims even after incurring a CSRA-
   covered personnel action. See Manivannan, 42 F.4th at 174. So there’s no
   race to the courthouse because the plaintiff can stay in district court before or
   after the CSRA-covered personnel action so long as he’s not challenging that
   CSRA-covered personnel action.
                                           C.
          The text, structure, and purpose of the CSRA all show that it provides
   the exclusive review procedures and employment remedies for CSRA-
   covered personnel actions. The dispositive question therefore is whether
   plaintiffs are challenging CSRA-covered personnel actions. If they are, they
   must channel their claims through the CSRA; if they are not, their claims are
   cognizable in the district court.
          We hold plaintiffs are not challenging CSRA-covered personnel
   actions. Plaintiffs are challenging (under the Constitution, the APA, and the
   DJA) the President’s executive orders requiring federal employees to make

                                            12
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563          Page: 13   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   irreversible medical decisions to take COVID-19 vaccines. “Even construing
   the CSRA’s language broadly, we fail to see how an employer’s” medical
   mandate could constitute a covered personnel action. Ibid.
          We (1) begin with Chapter 23. Then we (2) discuss Chapter 75.
                                         1.
          First, the Government fails to prove plaintiffs are challenging a
   “personnel action” under Chapter 23. Neither § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii)
   (“romanette xii”) nor § 2302(a)(2)(A)(iii) (“romanette iii”) applies to
   plaintiffs’ claims.
                                   Romanette xii
          Romanette xii is a residual clause that appears at the end of a twelve-
   item list. After defining Chapter 23’s “personnel action[s]” to include things
   such as appointments, promotions, and reassignments, Congress concluded
   the list by covering “any other significant change in duties, responsibilities,
   or working conditions.” 5 U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii). Such residual clauses
   trigger “the maxim ejusdem generis, the statutory canon that where general
   words follow specific words in a statutory enumeration, the general words are
   construed to embrace only objects similar in nature to those objects
   enumerated by the preceding specific words.” Circuit City Stores, Inc. v.
   Adams, 532 U.S. 105, 114–15 (2001) (quotation omitted). All eleven of the
   personnel actions that precede romanette xii are typical, everyday
   employment decisions to, say, promote or reassign a single employee; none
   is an irrevocable decision that extends beyond the term of employment. See
   Turner v. U.S. Agency for Glob. Media, 502 F. Supp. 3d 333, 367 (D.D.C. 2020)
   (“[C]ourts have determined that the term ‘working conditions’ generally
   refers to the daily, concrete parameters of a job, for example, hours, discrete
   assignments, and the provision of necessary equipment and resources.”).
   Accordingly, we must interpret romanette xii to refer to these discrete

                                         13
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 14    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   employment decisions—not government-wide mandates that commandeer
   the personal medical decisions of every federal employee. And we must
   interpret romanette xii to only include conditions that last for the duration of
   the employee’s job tenure—not mandated vaccinations that have
   consequences long after the employee leaves the federal workforce.
          Moreover, it strains romanette xii’s text far beyond its breaking point
   to say it includes permanent medical decisions made outside the workplace.
   “[D]uties, responsibilities, or working conditions” plainly refer to duties,
   responsibilities, or working conditions of the employee’s workplace. 5 U.S.C.
   § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii). It doesn’t apply to personal medical choices. That
   result follows a fortiori from Gustafson because if “working conditions” does
   not include peephole cameras in workplace changing rooms, it certainly does
   not include private, irreversible medical decisions made in consultation with
   private medical professionals outside the federal workplace. See 803 F.3d at
   888.
          This interpretation of romanette xii is further reinforced by the
   Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. OSHA, 142 S. Ct. 661 (2022) (per
   curiam). There, the Court considered whether OSHA’s COVID-19 vaccine
   mandate could constitute an “occupational safety and health standard[].” Id.
   at 665 (quoting 29 U.S.C. § 655(b)). The Court held no—both because “[w]e
   expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise
   powers of vast economic and political significance,” and because workplace-
   safety standards refer to “hazards that employees face at work” and not
   “day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of
   communicable diseases.” Ibid. (quotation omitted). Likewise here, Congress
   would need to speak much more clearly than it did in romanette xii if it
   wanted to strip § 1331 jurisdiction over challenges to a mandate that extends
   to every single federal employee’s irreversible medical decisions. Cf. Sistek v.
   Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 955 F.3d 948, 954–56 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (holding

                                         14
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 15       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   Congress’s enumeration of eleven specific personnel actions in the first
   eleven clauses of § 2302(a)(2)(A) precludes interpreting the residual clause
   in romanette xii to include a modest retaliatory investigation of a single
   employee).
                                         Romanette iii
           Nor does romanette iii help the Government. It defines Chapter 23’s
   “personnel action[s]” to include “disciplinary or corrective action” against
   federal employees. 5 U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(iii). But plaintiffs have not
   received any “disciplinary or corrective action,” and hence their claims do
   not challenge such actions. Some plaintiffs received “letters of counseling”
   and “letters of reprimand” for their failures to comply with the executive
   order. ROA.1195–1202, 1204, 1206, 1212, 1216, 1229, 1232, 1242, 1244, 1486,
   1493, 1745. But it’s well settled that such letters are not “disciplinary or
   corrective action[s]” under the CSRA. See, e.g., Sistek, 955 F.3d at 955–57
   (letter of reprimand was not a “personnel action” under the CSRA); Graham
   v. Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 931, 933 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (Roberts, J.) (letter of censure
   was not a “personnel action” under the CSRA). 2 Absent any evidence of
   such action, the Government has no basis to suggest plaintiffs’ claims are
   governed by romanette iii.
           And the Government all but concedes the point. In its panel-stage
   brief, the Government obliquely suggests an employee could seek review
   under the CSRA when he receives a letter of reprimand, but it never explains

           2
              The circuits likewise have held that letters of reprimand and other written
   warnings are not “materially adverse actions” in the analogous Title VII context. See
   Durant v. D.C. Gov’t, 875 F.3d 685, 698 (D.C. Cir. 2017); Baloch v. Kempthorne, 550 F.3d
   1191, 1199 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (Kavanaugh, J.); Medina v. Income Support Div., N.M., 413 F.3d
   1131, 1137 (10th Cir. 2005); Whitaker v. N. Ill. Univ., 424 F.3d 640, 648 (7th Cir. 2005);
   Stewart v. Evans, 275 F.3d 1126, 1136 (D.C. Cir. 2002); Krause v. City of La Crosse, 246 F.3d
   995, 1000 (7th Cir. 2001).

                                                15
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 16        Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

   how or why such review comports with a wall of contrary precedent from
   around the country. Moreover, the Government concedes that receipt of a
   letter is merely “an early stage of [a] still-hypothetical progressive disciplinary
   process.” Blue Br. 24 (emphasis added). That concession all but proves that
   counseling and reprimand letters do not trigger the CSRA’s review
   provisions. And it’s telling that the Government abandons the point
   altogether in its later-filed briefs. 3
                                                 2.
           Second, the Government fails to prove that Chapter 75 implicitly
   strips the court of jurisdiction. As Judge Barksdale noted in his panel
   dissent, the Government has never argued that plaintiffs have suffered any of
   the Chapter 75 personnel actions. See Feds for Medical Freedom, 30 F.4th at
   513 (Barksdale, J., dissenting). And as Judge Barksdale correctly
   concluded, “[t]he EO’s enactment . . . does not constitute an adverse action
   subject to CSRA. The case at hand is instead a pre-enforcement challenge to
   a government-wide policy, imposed by the President, that would affect the
   2.1 million federal civilian workers, including the 6,000 members of Feds for
   Medical Freedom.” Ibid.
           In its en banc briefs, the Government does not contest Judge
   Barksdale’s premise; it effectively concedes that plaintiffs have not yet
   incurred reviewable Chapter 75 employment actions. Rather, the
   Government (incorrectly) contests Judge Barksdale’s conclusion; it
   contends plaintiffs might one day incur Chapter 75 actions, and that alone
   should implicitly strip the jurisdiction explicitly conferred by § 1331 today.

           3
              Even if Chapter 23 did govern plaintiffs’ claims, it’s entirely speculative to think
   plaintiffs could ever get them before a federal court. See infra Part IV (discussing the OSC
   process).

                                                 16
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 17       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

           We disagree. “It is quite clear, that the jurisdiction of the Court
   depends upon the state of things at the time of the action brought, and that
   after vesting, it cannot be ousted by subsequent events.” Mollan v. Torrance,
   22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 537, 539 (1824); see also Carr v. Alta Verde Indus., Inc., 931
   F.2d 1055, 1061 (5th Cir. 1991) (“As with all questions of subject matter
   jurisdiction except mootness, standing is determined as of the date of the
   filing of the complaint, and subsequent events do not deprive the court of
   jurisdiction.”). And it’s equally clear that we do not make jurisdictional
   determinations based on hypothetical future facts. See, e.g., Clapper v.
   Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 409–11 (2013) (rejecting attempt to make
   jurisdictional determinations based on “[a]llegations of possible future
   injury” and “mere speculation” about what the Government will do
   (quotation omitted)). Just as plaintiffs cannot invoke a district court’s
   jurisdiction based on speculation about what the Government will do in the
   future, the Government cannot deny a district court’s jurisdiction based on
   speculation about what its employment supervisors will do in the future. 4

           4
             The contrary rule would have untenable consequences. Consider, for example,
   the amount-in-controversy requirement for diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332.
   “Events occurring subsequent to the institution of suit which reduce the amount
   recoverable below the statutory limit do not oust jurisdiction.” St. Paul Mercury Indem. Co.
   v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 289–90 (1938). “[O]nce the district court’s jurisdiction is
   established, subsequent events that reduce the amount in controversy to less than $75,000
   generally do not divest the court of diversity jurisdiction.” Gebbia v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,
   233 F.3d 880, 883 (5th Cir. 2000) (citations omitted). “Importantly, the jurisdictional facts
   must be judged as of the time the complaint is filed; subsequent events cannot serve to
   deprive the court of jurisdiction once it has attached.” St. Paul Reinsurance Co., Ltd. v.
   Greenberg, 134 F.3d 1250, 1253–54 (5th Cir. 1998) (citations omitted). Yet on the
   Government’s theory here, a defendant could defeat diversity jurisdiction by saying: “We
   recognize plaintiffs properly pleaded an amount in controversy of $75,001, but we’ll
   produce documents in discovery to show the real amount in controversy is around
   $25,000.” Such future-hypothetical-fact arguments have never been allowed to defeat (or
   create) subject matter jurisdiction.

                                                17
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 18       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

           Plaintiffs’ complaint does not challenge any personnel action
   reviewable under the CSRA. Nor does it challenge any personnel action they
   could hypothetically incur in the future. Rather, plaintiffs claim that the
   President’s vaccine mandate violates the U.S. Constitution and the APA. See
   Manivannan, 42 F.4th at 172 (“[W]hen assessing whether the CSRA bars
   federal jurisdiction over an otherwise reviewable claim, courts should look to
   the specific underlying conduct being challenged to determine whether that
   conduct is an employment action covered by the statute.” (emphasis
   added)). 5 The Government does not dispute that plaintiffs’ claims are ripe
   and otherwise cognizable under § 1331. And we can find nothing in the
   CSRA’s text, structure, or purpose that implicitly displaces that jurisdiction
   for a claim outside the CSRA’s coverage. We therefore hold that the district
   court properly exercised its jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ claims.
                                               III.
           Our reading of the CSRA’s text, structure, and purpose is confirmed
   by precedent. A long line of cases establishes that federal employees can bring
   facial, pre-enforcement actions against federal policies outside of the CSRA.
           For example, in NFFE v. Weinberger, 818 F.2d 935 (D.C. Cir. 1987),
   civilian federal employees sued to enjoin a directive establishing a “Drug
   Abuse Testing Program.” Id. at 937. The government argued that the CSRA
   precluded pre-enforcement review in federal court. Rejecting this argument,
   the court noted that its decisions “have made it absolutely clear that civilian

           5
              Judge Higginson points out that some members of Feds for Medical
   Freedom may have incurred adverse personnel actions. See post, at 66–67 & n.8 (Higginson,
   J., dissenting). That would matter only if such actions could displace § 1331 jurisdiction
   that otherwise attaches to claims that do not implicate the CSRA. See supra, at 12 (rejecting
   this contention); accord Manivannan, 42 F.4th at 174.

                                                18
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563           Page: 19    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   federal employees may seek to enjoin government actions that violate their
   constitutional rights.” Id. at 940 (citation omitted).
          NTEU v. Devine, 733 F.2d 114 (D.C. Cir. 1984), similarly rejected the
   government’s argument that the CSRA precludes jurisdiction over pre-
   enforcement challenges. The court held:
          This claim is meritless. It is one thing to say that when a statute
          provides a detailed scheme of administrative protection for
          defined employment rights, less significant employment rights
          of the same sort are implicitly excluded and cannot form the
          basis for relief directly through the courts. It is quite different
          to suggest, as appellant does, that a detailed scheme of
          administrative        adjudication       impliedly       precludes
          preenforcement judicial review of rules.
   Id. at 117 n.8 (citations omitted).
          The Supreme Court has also, on multiple occasions, entertained pre-
   enforcement challenges to laws or directives affecting federal employees
   without a word about CSRA preclusion. See, e.g., NTEU v. Von Raab, 489
   U.S. 656 (1989) (pre-enforcement challenge to drug-testing program for
   federal employees); United States v. NTEU, 513 U.S. 454 (1995) (pre-
   enforcement challenge to a law prohibiting federal employees from accepting
   honoraria).
          We have done the same. For example, in AFGE v. FLRA, 794 F.2d
   1013 (5th Cir. 1986), we cited Devine for the proposition that a union of
   federal employees would be able to bring a pre-enforcement challenge to
   OPM regulations in district court. See id. at 1015–16. Similarly, in NTEU v.
   Bush, 891 F.2d 99 (5th Cir. 1989), we addressed the merits of a pre-
   enforcement suit challenging an executive order mandating drug testing for
   federal employees. See id. at 100. We didn’t mention CSRA preclusion, even
   though the claims in the suit centered on the CSRA. See ibid.

                                          19
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563           Page: 20   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                      No. 22-40043

          The Government has two responses. First, it points out that these
   cases predate Elgin, which according to the Government, abrogated them.
   But as we recently held in Cochran v. SEC, 20 F.4th 194 (5th Cir. 2021) (en
   banc), cert. granted, 142 S. Ct. 2707 (2022), Elgin did not “break new ground”
   regarding implicit preclusion. Id. at 206. Nor did Elgin address pre-
   enforcement challenges at all. And the Government’s position entails that
   Elgin held sub silentio that the Court lacked jurisdiction in all its past cases
   entertaining pre-enforcement challenges to federal employment policies—
   including Von Raab and United States v. NTEU. So Elgin can’t support the
   weight the Government puts on it.
          The Government’s other response is to claim that most of these
   decisions involve “drive-by jurisdictional rulings” on the scope of CSRA
   preclusion. Gray Br. 6 (quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523
   U.S. 83, 91 (1998)). That’s certainly not true of Weinberger and Devine. In
   those cases, the D.C. Circuit carefully considered and emphatically rejected
   the Government’s theory of CSRA preclusion as “discredited” and
   “meritless.” Weinberger, 818 F.2d at 939–42; Devine, 733 F.2d at 117 n.8. So
   it’s no surprise that litigants and courts gave it less-thorough consideration
   in later cases.
                                          IV.
          Because the CSRA’s text, structure, and purpose foreclose the
   Government’s implicit-jurisdiction-stripping theory, we need not proceed to
   an analysis of the factors listed in Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U.S.
   200 (1994). See Elgin, 567 U.S. at 10; Cochran, 20 F.4th at 204. But even if
   we reach them, those factors only confirm that the CSRA left intact the
   district court’s jurisdiction over this suit.
          The first Thunder Basin factor is whether “a finding of preclusion
   could foreclose all meaningful judicial review.” 510 U.S. at 212–13. The

                                           20
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563              Page: 21      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   Government contends that plaintiffs have two avenues for meaningful
   judicial review: Chapter 23 and the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651.
           Chapter 23 provides no guarantee of judicial review—much less a
   meaningful one. With exceptions not relevant here, 6 claims covered by
   Chapter 23 are vindicable only by OSC. And here’s how the OSC process
   works: The employee first files a complaint with the OSC. See 5 U.S.C.
   § 1214(a)(1)(A). If the OSC finds “reasonable grounds” of a “prohibited
   personnel practice,” the OSC must report it to the employing agency,
   MSPB, and OPM. Id. § 1214(b)(2)(B). If the agency doesn’t fix the problem,
   the OSC “may petition” to the MSPB. Id. § 1214(b)(2)(C) (emphasis added).
   And only a final order from the MSPB is reviewable before the Federal
   Circuit. See id. § 1214(c). This process gives the OSC total and unfettered
   discretion to decide whether to bring the claims before the MSPB. See
   Krafsur v. Davenport, 736 F.3d 1032, 1034 (6th Cir. 2013) (“[I]f the Special
   Counsel . . . declines to refer the case to the Board, the employee is out of
   luck. A court may not review the Special Counsel’s decisions unless the
   Counsel has declined to investigate a complaint at all.” (quotation omitted)).
   Its decisions not to pursue claims are unreviewable. Cf. Heckler v. Chaney,
   470 U.S. 821, 837 (1985) (prosecutorial discretion not reviewable).
           This is not particularly surprising, given that Chapter 23 is the bottom
   of the CSRA’s pyramid and warrants the fewest procedural protections for
   federal employees. See Carducci, 714 F.2d at 175. But the narrowness of
   Chapter 23’s review provisions—and the fact that any review at all turns on

           6
            For example, Congress created an “individual right of action” in certain reprisal
   cases under § 2302(b)(8) and § 2302(b)(9)(A)(i), (B), (C), and (D) that allows some
   employees to sue without OSC’s involvement. See 5 U.S.C. §§ 1221, 1214(a)(3); Orr v.
   Dep’t of Treasury, 83 M.S.P.R. 117 (1999). But the Government doesn’t argue that this
   exception, or any other, applies.

                                              21
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 22   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   the unreviewable discretion of Government officials—puts the lie to the
   Government’s two-sentence suggestion that the OSC or MSPB could or
   would give the plaintiffs relief against a nationwide vaccine mandate. See
   Gov’t En Banc Br. 26 (so suggesting).
           As for the Government’s invocation of the All Writs Act, it proves
   both too much and too little. It’s too much because the Government cannot
   explain how the CSRA implicitly strips § 1331 jurisdiction but somehow does
   not strip § 1651 jurisdiction. And all of the Government’s policy arguments
   about the former—that it undermines the CSRA’s “integrated” review,
   creates a “loophole,” &c.—apply equally to the latter. But the
   Government’s reliance on the All Writs Act also proves too little because as
   the Government itself concedes, mandamus relief is a “drastic and
   extraordinary” remedy “reserved for really extraordinary causes.” Cheney v.
   U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 380 (2004) (quotation omitted). So it’s
   hard to see how it provides “meaningful review.” Moreover, as then-Judge
   Roberts noted for the D.C. Circuit, employees with CSRA-covered claims
   cannot avail themselves of the All Writs Act. See Fornaro v. James, 416 F.3d
   63, 69–70 (D.C. Cir. 2005). So the only way the All Writs Act could apply,
   on the Government’s own logic, is to hold that the plaintiffs’ claims are
   outside the CSRA, thus obviating the need for the All Writs Act in the first
   place. In all events, the All Writs Act does not provide “meaningful review”
   here.
           The second Thunder Basin factor is whether plaintiffs’ claims are
   “wholly collateral” to the CSRA’s review provisions. 510 U.S. at 212
   (quotation omitted). “[W]hether a claim is collateral to the relevant
   statutory-review scheme depends on whether that scheme is intended to
   provide the sort of relief sought by the plaintiff.” Cochran, 20 F.4th at 207.

                                         22
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 23    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

          This factor again cuts against stripping the district court of
   jurisdiction. As detailed in Part II.A, the CSRA scheme is a highly reticulated
   web of statutes and regulations spanning multiple federal agencies (including
   the employee’s own, the OSC, the OPM, the EEOC, and the MSPB) with
   overlapping procedural requirements and complicated substantive rules. See,
   e.g., Butler v. West, 164 F.3d 634, 637 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (describing it as a
   “complicated tapestry”). We’ve described the CSRA as a winding road
   which cannot be driven by “the easily carsick.” Punch, 945 F.3d at 324. The
   important point for present purposes, however, is that individual federal
   employees are forced to navigate it to air their individual grievances regarding
   individual personnel actions. The standard fare for the MSPB’s docket
   includes employee misconduct, hostile work environments, whistleblowing,
   and the like. No part of it includes reviewing an executive order for
   compliance with the APA or ordering injunctive relief that affects thousands
   or millions of employees. No part of its byzantine procedures is suited for (or
   even appears to allow) an emergency preliminary injunction. And the
   Government does not cite a single case, nor have we found one, where OSC
   agreed in its unreviewable discretion to petition the MSPB for relief that
   remotely resembles what plaintiffs request here.
          The Government nevertheless contends plaintiffs’ claims are not
   wholly collateral to the CSRA because what plaintiffs really want is to “avoid
   adverse employment action,” namely their terminations. Gov’t En Banc Br.
   17, 21–22. This is an untenable recharacterization of plaintiffs’ suit, which
   prayed to have a federal court “[h]old unlawful and set aside the Federal
   Employee Mandate” and did not make specific employment-related claims.
   ROA.138 (complaint). Declaring unlawful an executive order that requires
   millions of people to undergo a medical procedure is hardly “relief that the
   CSRA routinely affords.” Elgin, 567 U.S. at 22.

                                         23
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563        Page: 24    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

          The third Thunder Basin factor is whether the claims at issue are
   “outside the agency’s expertise.” 510 U.S. at 212. As in Cochran, this case
   involves constitutional issues and “standard questions of administrative law,
   which the courts are at no disadvantage in answering.” 20 F.4th at 207–08
   (quotation omitted). By contrast, MSPB’s expertise lies in “ensur[ing] that
   Federal employees are protected against abuses by agency management, that
   Executive branch agencies make employment decisions in accordance with
   the merit system principles, and that Federal merit systems are kept free of
   prohibited personnel practices.” Merit Systems Protection
   Board,        An     Introduction          to    the       Merit    Systems
   Protection Board 5 (1999).
          The Government doesn’t argue that plaintiffs’ claims fall under the
   MSPB’s expertise. Rather, the Government argues that “the MSPB’s
   resolution of preliminary questions unique to the employment context could
   obviate the need to address” plaintiffs’ claims. Gov’t En Banc Br. 17
   (quotation omitted) (emphasis added). The Government provides no further
   support for this claim, however, and we therefore hold that it’s forfeited.
   Innova Hosp. San Antonio, Ltd. P’ship v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Ga., Inc.,
   892 F.3d 719, 732 (5th Cir. 2018).
                                         V.
          Judge Higginson’s dissent warrants a few additional words. He
   agrees that we have jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ constitutional claims. Thus,
   thirteen of the seventeen members of our en banc court agree that the CSRA
   does not implicitly strip the jurisdiction that § 1331 explicitly confers on the
   district court to hear plaintiffs’ constitutional claims. And eleven members
   agree that the CSRA does not implicitly strip jurisdiction over any of
   plaintiffs’ claims, constitutional and non-constitutional alike. But he

                                         24
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 25   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   disagrees with how we reach that conclusion. We write to address these areas
   of disagreement.
                                          A.
          As an initial matter, Judge Higginson’s disagreement with the
   majority opinion is perplexing. On the one hand, the dissenting opinion says
   “the CSRA does not provide meaningful judicial review of the plaintiffs’ pre-
   enforcement challenge and [therefore] Congress did not intend the CSRA to
   foreclose judicial review of their separation-of-powers claim” against the
   vaccine requirement, post, at 50 (Higginson, J., dissenting) (emphasis added),
   and “nothing in the CSRA shows that Congress meant to preclude federal
   jurisdiction to adjudicate separation-of-powers challenges to employment
   policies set by the President,” id. at 76 (emphasis added). On the other hand,
   the dissenting opinion says, “Congress’s intent to preclude judicial review
   over challenges to the [vaccine] requirement is fairly discernible within the
   statutory scheme,” id. at 63, “Congress’s intent to preclude jurisdiction over
   pre-enforcement challenges is fairly discernible in the statute,” id. at 64, and
   “the only conclusion consistent with the text of the [CSRA] and binding
   Supreme Court authority is that Congress’s intent to preclude pre-
   enforcement challenges is fairly discernible in the CSRA,” id. at 69. It’s
   difficult to reconcile these two positions.
          The dissent tries to square that circle by arguing that plaintiffs’
   separation-of-powers challenges raise unique constitutional concerns and
   thereby preclude Congress from implicitly stripping § 1331 jurisdiction in this
   case. See, e.g., id. at 75–76 & n.16. But it’s unclear where the dissenting
   opinion would root its concerns in the Constitution or Supreme Court
   precedent. True, the Supreme Court has said the Constitution requires a
   federal forum for certain habeas claims, see Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723,
   795 (2008), and takings claims, see First Eng. Evangelical Lutheran Church of

                                          25
Case: 22-40043         Document: 00516687563                Page: 26       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

   Glendale v. Los Angeles Cnty., Cal., 482 U.S. 304, 315–19 (1987); Richard
   H. Fallon, Jr., John F. Manning, Daniel J. Meltzer &
   David L. Shapiro, Hart & Wechsler’s The Federal Courts
   and the Federal System 330 (7th ed. 2015) [Hart & Wechsler].
   But it’s well established that Congress need not provide a federal forum for
   constitutional claims more generally. To the contrary, the first Congress did
   not create general federal question jurisdiction in the Judiciary Act of 1789,
   so all manner of constitutional claims were denied a federal forum at the
   Founding without offending any constitutional principle. See Hart &
   Wechsler, supra, at 25–26; Daniel J. Meltzer, The History and Structure of
   Article III, 138 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1569, 1585–93 (1990). 7
           Even if the dissenting opinion could identify a constitutional problem
   to be avoided, it then must identify an alternative interpretation of the
   statutory text that avoids it. See Nielsen v. Preap, 139 S. Ct. 954, 972 (2019)
   (“The trouble with this argument is that constitutional avoidance comes into
   play only when, after the application of ordinary textual analysis, the statute
   is found to be susceptible of more than one construction. The canon has no
   application absent ambiguity.” (quotation omitted)); Zadvydas v. Davis, 533
   U.S. 678, 696 (2001) (“Despite this constitutional problem, if Congress has
   made its intent in the statute clear, we must give effect to that intent.”

           7
                If the dissenting opinion intends to ally itself with an Amarian conception of
   Article III, § 2, clause 1—namely, that Congress somehow must provide a federal forum
   for all cases arising under federal law, see Akhil R. Amar, A Neo-Federalist View of Article III:
   Separating the Two Tiers of Federal Jurisdiction, 65 B.U. L. Rev. 205 (1985)—then it
   proves too much. That’s because Article III, § 2, clause 1 says the judicial power extends
   to “all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution [and] the Laws of the United
   States . . . .” (emphasis added). The Amarian view of Article III would require Congress to
   provide a federal forum for plaintiffs’ statutory APA claims, which the dissenting opinion
   expressly rejects. See post, at 70 n.12 (Higginson, J., dissenting) (arguing Congress can strip
   all jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ claims arising under the APA).

                                                  26
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563          Page: 27   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                   No. 22-40043

   (quotation omitted)). But the dissent raises no such plausible alternative
   reading. It simply says there’s a constitutional problem of unknown
   constitutional provenance, so plaintiffs must win to avoid it. That’s a quite-
   odd form of constitutional avoidance.
                                         B.
          Second, the dissent argues that the CSRA implicitly strips § 1331
   jurisdiction over CSRA-covered personnel actions. See, e.g., post, at 54
   (Higginson, J., dissenting). We agree. Elgin, Fausto, this majority opinion,
   and the dissent all agree (quite clearly) that where the CSRA applies, it
   implicitly strips the district court’s § 1331 jurisdiction. The question of
   course is whether the CSRA applies.
          And on that question, the dissent appears to say that the CSRA applies
   to both personnel actions and pre-enforcement personnel actions. But this
   proposition belies confusion over (1) what plaintiffs are challenging and
   (2) what sort of jurisdiction the CSRA strips. Plaintiffs are challenging the
   President’s vaccine mandate—not any personnel action that may or may not
   be taken in conjunction with that mandate. And the CSRA’s implicit effects
   on jurisdiction depend on the claims plaintiffs choose to bring. That’s why
   the CSRA can apply when a plaintiff challenges his demotion or termination
   under Chapter 75 and not apply when the employee’s boss installs a hidden
   camera in a workplace changing room. See supra, at 8. Thus, if the employee
   is subject to surveillance and then gets fired, she has a multitude of claims.
   She might, for example, challenge her termination—which would be subject
   to the CSRA/MSPB process. But if the employee seeks damages for the
   invasion of privacy itself, which is an obvious injury separate and apart from
   the employment action, that challenge does nothing to trigger the CSRA or
   to implicitly strip § 1331 jurisdiction. See Gustafson, 803 F.3d at 888; Bush,
   462 U.S. at 385 n.28.

                                         27
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563            Page: 28     Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                      No. 22-40043

          So it might be true, as the dissenting opinion sometimes suggests, that
   the CSRA would implicitly strip jurisdiction over an employee’s pre-
   termination suit to enjoin her termination (i.e., “pre-enforcement challenge
   to a covered personnel action”). We take no position on that because it’s
   irrelevant here. All that matters here is that plaintiffs have identified an illegal
   vaccine mandate and, separate and apart from any personnel action the
   President might one day take to enforce that illegal order, the plaintiffs want
   judicial review of it. The CSRA does nothing to implicitly strip jurisdiction
   over these claims because the vaccine mandate itself is not a personnel
   action—even if a future employer at some future time might take some future
   action to impose some future personnel action on a future plaintiff who might
   violate the mandate in the future.
                                           C.
          The dissenting opinion next says the vaccine mandate itself is a
   “working condition” of federal employment. That’s so, the dissent says,
   because romanette xii’s reference to “working conditions” is so capacious
   that it includes—and hence channels into the MSPB—any significant change
   to any “circumstances under which an employee performs his or her job.”
   Post, at 57 (Higginson, J., dissenting). Under the dissenting opinion’s theory,
   it’s unclear there are any limits at all on what the President could call a change
   in “working conditions.” But we know there are limits because the Supreme
   Court has said that warrantless searches and wiretaps are so far afield from
   the CSRA’s list of personnel actions that they remain actionable in district
   court. See Bush, 462 U.S. at 385 n.28; see also Collins, 195 F.3d at 1080. And
   our sister circuits have said the same thing about peephole cameras and
   assaults. See Gustafson, 803 F.3d at 888; Brock, 64 F.3d at 1425; Orsay, 289
   F.3d at 1131.

                                           28
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 29   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

          The dissenting opinion hazards no argument that an employee’s
   irrevocable medical decision like the one at issue here is somehow the
   employer’s prerogative in ways that wiretaps, peephole cameras, and assaults
   are not. Rather, the dissenting opinion contends that Congress contravened
   Bush v. Lucas (and Gustafson, Brock, Orsay, and Collins by extension) when it
   added romanettes x through xii to the CSRA. See post, at 59–61 & n.5
   (Higginson, J., dissenting). Those romanettes bring under the CSRA “a
   decision to order psychiatric testing or examination,” “the implementation
   or enforcement of any nondisclosure policy, form, or agreement,” and “any
   other significant change in duties, responsibilities, or working conditions.” 5
   U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(x)–(xii). They say nothing about wiretaps, peephole
   cameras, workplace assaults, or for that matter irrevocable medical decisions.
   We cannot infer that Congress’s decision to cover nondisclosure agreements
   under the CSRA brings with it an implied congressional decision to cover
   elephantine medical decisions in romanette xii’s ambiguous catchall phrase.
   To conclude otherwise, “we would have to conclude that Congress not only
   had hidden a rather large elephant in a rather obscure mousehole, but had
   buried the ambiguity in which the pachyderm lurks beneath an incredibly
   deep mound of specificity, none of which bears the footprints of the beast or
   any indication that Congress even suspected its presence.” ABA v. FTC, 430
   F.3d 457, 469 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (Sentelle, J.).
          Nor would it matter if the President ordered employees to make their
   irrevocable medical decisions “at work.” Post, at 62 (Higginson, J.,
   dissenting). The vaccine mandate still would not be covered by the CSRA in
   any event. After all, the peephole camera in Gustafson was in the workplace.
   See 803 F.3d at 886–87. So too with the hypothesized wiretaps in Bush. See
   462 U.S. at 385 n.28. So too with the assaults in Brock. See 64 F.3d at 1425.
   The reason these illegalities were actionable outside of the CSRA had
   nothing to do with the location or timing of the employer’s actions. They

                                         29
Case: 22-40043    Document: 00516687563              Page: 30   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                      No. 22-40043

   were actionable outside of the CSRA because the definition of “personnel
   action” cannot reasonably be read to include peephole cameras, assaults, or
   illegal wiretaps. The same is true of irrevocable medical decisions. The fact
   that the President ordered employees to make medical decisions outside of
   the workplace—and to live with those irrevocable decisions even after they
   leave the federal workforce—bolsters plaintiffs’ argument that the mandate
   is not a “working condition.” But it’s not necessary.
                                          D.
          The dissenting opinion next contends that its reading of the CSRA is
   compelled by “the logic of Fausto.” Post, at 64 (Higginson, J., dissenting).
   Again, we respectfully disagree.
          Fausto involved the removal of a federal employee—unquestionably a
   “personnel    action”    covered       by   the      CSRA.    See   5   U.S.C.
   §§ 2302(a)(2)(A)(iii), 7512(1) (covering “a removal”). While the CSRA
   covered the employer’s personnel action, it did not cover Fausto himself
   because he served in the “excepted service.” Fausto, 484 U.S. at 441 & n.1.
   Because Congress carved Fausto out of the CSRA’s coverage, he sought
   remedies under a different federal statute called the Back Pay Act, 5 U.S.C.
   § 5596. The question presented was whether Congress’s decision not to
   cover Fausto under the CSRA impliedly preempted his ability to seek more
   generous remedies under the Back Pay Act. The Court held yes because to
   hold otherwise “would have given him greater rights than were available
   under the CSRA to employees who enjoyed rights under that statute—
   primarily those in the competitive service.” Graham, 358 F.3d at 934.
          Likewise in Graham, the D.C. Circuit held that an employee covered
   by the CSRA must use that process—and only that process—to challenge his
   employer’s personnel actions. See ibid. And it did not matter that the
   particular personnel action at issue in Graham (the issuance of a censure

                                          30
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563          Page: 31   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   letter) was not one of the listed personnel actions covered by the CSRA. As
   then-Judge Roberts wrote: “in granting review with respect to some
   personnel actions under the CSRA, Congress meant to preclude review of
   others.” Ibid.
           These cases teach that the CSRA establishes a comprehensive
   framework for (1) federal employees challenging (2) personnel actions.
   Under both Fausto and Graham, an employee cannot avoid the CSRA’s
   implicit stripping of § 1331 jurisdiction by saying “Congress’s decision to
   limit (1) covered employees and (2) covered personnel actions” should be
   read to allow (1) uncovered employees to avoid the CSRA or (2) judicial
   review of uncovered personnel actions.
           But neither decision strips § 1331 jurisdiction over claims that do not
   challenge personnel actions. That’s why, again, the Supreme Court said that
   federal employees can bring claims unrelated to personnel actions outside of
   the CSRA. See Bush, 462 U.S. at 385 n.28. Congress certainly could pass a
   statute that says, “federal employers are suable under the CSRA and only
   under the CSRA.” But that’s not what Congress said. Congress said
   personnel-action claims must go through the CSRA process—thus leaving
   undisturbed whatever § 1331 jurisdiction might otherwise attach to claims
   unrelated to personnel actions, like wiretaps, peephole cameras, and
   irrevocable medical decisions.
                                         E.
           The dissenting opinion is also incorrect to contend “this case is
   justiciable because it involves challenges to CSRA-covered personnel
   actions.” Post, at 67 (Higginson, J., dissenting). The dissent’s theory appears
   to be that plaintiffs only have standing because the Government threatens to
   take CSRA-covered personnel actions against noncompliant employees. See
   ibid.

                                          31
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563           Page: 32    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

          We respectfully disagree because the plaintiffs alleged an injury
   distinct from any personnel action. The mandated medical decision alone is
   an injury. When a “regulation is directed at [plaintiffs] in particular” and
   “requires them to make significant changes,” plaintiffs have suffered an
   injury to challenge the order even if the Government has yet to elucidate the
   precise consequences of failing to comply. Abbott Lab’ys v. Gardner, 387 U.S.
   136, 154 (1967); see also Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561–62 (1992).
   Plaintiffs do not have to identify exactly how the Government will enforce
   the mandate; it’s enough that plaintiffs face the ominous order, “get
   vaccinated or else.” See Abbott Lab’ys, 387 U.S. at 151 (holding that plaintiffs
   subject to a regulation had standing to challenge it even though the Attorney
   General had yet to “authorize criminal and seizure actions for violations of
   the statute”).
          Moreover, plaintiffs did not seek or receive relief against any
   personnel action. Plaintiffs only sought an injunction against the executive
   order. The executive order nowhere references any threatened or actual
   personnel action. See Exec. Order 14043. And the district court’s
   injunction nowhere restricts the Government from bringing personnel
   actions against plaintiffs. Rather, it prevents the Government from
   “implementing or enforcing Executive Order 14043 until this case is resolved
   on the merits.” ROA.1770. The Government is thus prohibited from
   ordering plaintiffs to get vaccinated—but the Government is not prohibited
   from taking personnel actions against them.
          True, when a plaintiff seeks pre-enforcement review of a government
   mandate, ripeness is always a concern. See, e.g., Abbott Lab’ys, 387 U.S. at
   148. But in this case, it’s not difficult “to evaluate both the fitness of the
   issues for judicial decision and the hardship to the parties of withholding
   court consideration.” Id. at 149. The issue for judicial decision is the purely
   legal one of whether the President can lawfully enact this order. See ibid.

                                          32
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 33   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   (holding “the issues presented are appropriate for judicial resolution at this
   time” because “all parties agree that the issue tendered is a purely legal
   one”). And the hardships to the plaintiffs of withholding a decision are plain:
   they’ll be forced to undergo irrevocable medical procedures and comply with
   a potentially unlawful order or face unknown consequences that “may be
   even more costly.” See id. at 153; id. at 152 (finding hardship and hence
   ripeness where “[t]he regulations are clear-cut, and were made effective
   immediately upon publication; [and the Government’s lawyers made clear]
   that immediate compliance with their terms was expected”). The mandate
   thus plainly affects plaintiffs’ “primary conduct” and hence is ripe for review
   irrespective of any personnel actions the Government has taken or might
   eventually take. Nat’l Park Hosp. Ass’n v. Dep’t of Interior, 538 U.S. 803, 810
   (2003).
                                          F.
          Finally, the dissenting opinion claims that “[t]his circuit’s door is now
   open to all pre-enforcement challenges to federal employment policies.
   Plaintiffs are welcome to challenge any personnel action before it takes
   place.” Post, at 67–68 (Higginson, J., dissenting) (footnote omitted). “But
   this is one of those instances in which the dissent clearly tells us what the law
   is not.” Waste Mgmt. of La., L.L.C. v. River Birch, Inc., 920 F.3d 958, 978 (5th
   Cir. 2019) (Oldham, J., dissenting) (quotation omitted).
          Plaintiffs in this circuit, as in every circuit of which we’re aware, are
   not free to challenge federal personnel actions under § 1331. Instead,
   challenges to federal personnel actions must be channeled through the CSRA
   process. True, § 1331 jurisdiction remains undisturbed for claims that do not
   challenge federal personnel actions. But even then, the eye of the federal
   employee’s needle is narrow. The plaintiff still must demonstrate an injury
   in fact under well-established standing principles. And if the employee seeks

                                          33
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563              Page: 34      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   pre-enforcement review of a federal mandate, he must satisfy well-
   established ripeness rules. 8 And even if the plaintiff can thread that needle,
   again, he cannot “challenge any personnel action before it takes place.” Post,
   at 68 (Higginson, J., dissenting). He can only challenge the Government’s
   illegal actions that do not constitute a personnel action.
           Ours is hardly the first court to recognize that this needle, while
   narrow, can be threaded. The plaintiffs in Gustafson, Brock, Orsay, and Collins
   all managed to do it. The sky did not fall, and the doors of the inferior federal
   courts were not blown open to claims that otherwise belonged in the
   CSRA/MSPB process. Therefore in our view, the dissenting opinion’s
   rhetoric is misplaced.
                                              VI.
           As noted, the panel limited its decision to jurisdiction. See Feds for
   Medical Freedom, 30 F.4th at 511. Finding that we have jurisdiction, we review
   the district court’s decision regarding the other factors necessary for a
   preliminary injunction for abuse of discretion. See NetChoice, L.L.C. v.
   Paxton, 49 F.4th 439, 447 (5th Cir. 2022). “A preliminary injunction is an
   extraordinary remedy never awarded as of right.” Winter v. Nat. Res. Def.
   Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 24 (2008). “A plaintiff seeking a preliminary
   injunction must establish that he is likely to succeed on the merits, that he is
   likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, that the
   balance of equities tips in his favor, and that an injunction is in the public
   interest.” Id. at 20. The district court carefully considered these factors and
   wrote a thorough opinion explaining its decision to grant preliminary relief.
   After carefully considering the district court’s opinion and the

           8
           For example, the district judge in this case rejected a previous challenge to this
   same mandate as unripe. See Rodden v. Fauci, 571 F. Supp. 3d 686, 689 (S.D. Tex. 2021).

                                              34
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 35    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   Government’s criticisms of it, we are unpersuaded that the district court
   abused its discretion. And we need not repeat the district court’s reasoning,
   with which we substantially agree.
          The one issue that warrants additional discussion is the scope of
   injunctive relief. The Supreme Court has recently stayed nationwide
   injunctions. See, e.g., DHS v. New York, 140 S. Ct. 599 (2020) (mem.). But
   the Court has yet to tell us they’re verboten. Some Justices have expressed
   concerns that such injunctions can contravene equitable principles because
   “[e]quitable remedies, like remedies in general, are meant to redress the
   injuries sustained by a particular plaintiff in a particular lawsuit.” New York,
   140 S. Ct. at 600 (Gorsuch, J., concurring); see also Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S.
   Ct. 2392, 2426 (2018) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“Universal injunctions do
   not seem to comply with those [equitable] principles.”). For example, the
   English system of equity did not authorize injunctions against the King. See
   Trump, 138 S. Ct. at 2427 (Thomas, J., concurring). And “as a general rule,
   American courts of equity did not provide relief beyond the parties to the
   case.” Ibid. As with all general rules, of course, this one was subject to
   exceptions—the most important of which was that an injunction could benefit
   non-parties as long as “that benefit was merely incidental.” Ibid.
          It appears that the district court did its best to follow these equitable
   principles in this case. The court carefully carved the President out of its
   injunction, which is an obviously imperfect analogue to the English king but
   an equally obvious good-faith recognition of the rule. It also recognized that,
   unlike the plaintiffs in both New York and Hawaii, the lead plaintiff in this
   case has over 6,000 members spread across every State in the Nation and
   nearly every federal agency in the entire Government. ROA.1770. And
   plaintiffs cited multiple instances in the aftermath of Executive Order 14043
   where the Government wrongfully targeted unvaccinated federal employees
   who sought exemptions—despite assurances from the Government that it

                                         35
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 36   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   would not do so. ROA.1454, 1464, 1600, 1625, 1645. The court therefore
   expressed its “fears that limiting the relief to only those before it would prove
   unwieldy and would only cause more confusion.” ROA.1770. On this record
   and absent binding precedent from the Supreme Court, we cannot say that
   the district court abused its discretion in rejecting the Government’s
   assurances that it could and would comply with an injunction limited to the
   plaintiffs’ members.
          The Government’s position on the scope of the injunction also sits
   awkwardly with its position on the merits. On the merits, the Government
   wants “consistency across government in enforcement of this government-
   wide vaccine policy.” ROA.810. But on the scope of the injunction, the
   Government wants piecemeal enforcement, where thousands of plaintiffs’
   members across the Nation are subject to the district court’s injunction,
   others are given exemptions from vaccination, and only the remainder are
   subject to the President’s mandate. That undermines rather than supports
   the Government’s purported interest in “consistency across government in
   enforcement of this government-wide vaccine policy.” ROA.810.
          Finally, a word about concerns expressed by Judge Haynes and
   Judge Stewart regarding a purported conflict between this injunction
   and the decisions of other courts across the country. They worry that the
   district court’s injunction awards relief to parties who have already lost their
   claims elsewhere. But our esteemed colleagues reference no cases where
   plaintiffs have lost their claims on the merits. They first cite Rydie v. Biden,
   No. 21-2359, 2022 WL 1153249 (4th Cir. Apr. 19, 2022) (unpublished).
   There, our sister circuit vacated a district court judgment denying a
   preliminary injunction of Executive Order 14043 but only because the court
   concluded that the CSRA stripped the district court of jurisdiction. See id. at
   *1. The panel dismissed the case under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) without
   prejudice and without reaching the merits. See id. at *8 (“We therefore

                                          36
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 37   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   vacate the district court’s judgment and remand the case with instructions
   that it be dismissed without prejudice for lack of subject-matter
   jurisdiction.”). The D.C. Circuit took the same route in Payne v. Biden, ---
   F.4th ----, 2023 WL 2576742 (D.C. Cir. 2023). See id. at *7 (dismissing for
   lack of subject matter jurisdiction without reaching the merits). In all the
   other cases Judge Stewart cites, the districts courts dismissed the claims
   without prejudice on the grounds that the CSRA stripped jurisdiction. See
   Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Emps. Loc. 2018 v. Biden, 598 F. Supp. 3d 241, 248–49
   (E.D. Pa. 2022); Payne v. Biden, 602 F. Supp. 3d 147, 151 (D.D.C. 2022); Am.
   Fed’n of Gov’t Emps. Loc. 2586 v. Biden, No. CIV-21-1130-SLP, 2022 WL
   3695297, at *6 (W.D. Okla. July 22, 2022). The overwhelming majority of
   district courts that have dismissed these challenges have also done so for lack
   of jurisdiction under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1). See, e.g., Calderwood v.
   United States, No. 2:21-CV-702-CLM, 2022 WL 4353382 (N.D. Ala. Aug.
   25, 2022); Church v. Biden, No. 21-2815 (CKK), 2022 WL 1491100 (D.D.C.
   May 11, 2022); Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Emps. Loc. 501 v. Biden, 576 F. Supp. 3d
   1155 (S.D. Fla. 2021); McCray v. Biden, 574 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2021);
   Brass v. Biden, No. 21-CV-02778-CNS-MEH, 2022 WL 11732833 (D. Colo.
   Oct. 20, 2022). Thirteen members of this court, including Judge Haynes,
   agree that we have jurisdiction and must reach the merits of the preliminary
   injunction. Accordingly, any perceived conflict is misconstrued, and any
   benefit to outside parties is “merely incidental.” See Trump, 138 S. Ct. at
   2427 (Thomas, J., concurring).
          We hasten to emphasize that this case only involves a preliminary
   injunction. The preliminary injunction’s purpose is to maintain the status
   quo until the parties have the chance to adjudicate the merits. See Benisek v.
   Lamone, 138 S. Ct. 1942, 1945 (2018) (“[T]he purpose of a preliminary
   injunction is merely to preserve the relative positions of the parties until a
   trial on the merits can be held . . . .” (quotation omitted)); Texas v. United

                                         37
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 38   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   States, 809 F.3d 134, 187 n.205 (5th Cir. 2015), affirmed by an equally divided
   Court, 579 U.S. 547 (2016) (per curiam) (similar). When the parties proceed
   to the merits in the district court, the plaintiffs will have to prove that
   whatever injunction they request is broad enough to protect against their
   proven injuries and no broader. And the Government will have another
   chance to show that any permanent injunction should be narrower than the
   preliminary one. And both sides will have to grapple with the White House’s
   announcement that the COVID emergency will finally end on May 11, 2023.
   See Exec. Off. of the President, Statement of Administration Policy Re: H.R.
   382 & H.J. Res. 7 (Jan. 30, 2023).
          AFFIRMED.

                                         38
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 39       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, joined by Jones, Circuit Judge, concurring:
           Our court today holds that we have jurisdiction to hear this challenge
   to the President’s vaccine mandate for federal employees. Moreover, by
   affirming the preliminary injunction, we also hold that coercing an employee
   to comply with a vaccine mandate as a condition of continued employment
   constitutes irreparable injury. 1 I concur.
           Judge Higginson agrees that we have jurisdiction. But he concludes
   that we should deny relief on the merits and therefore reverse. He notes that
   “the ‘executive Power’—all of it—is ‘vested in a President,’ who must ‘take
   Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” Post, at 77 (Higginson, J.,
   concurring in part and dissenting in part) (quoting Seila Law LLC v.
   Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, 140 S. Ct. 2183, 2191 (2020) (quoting U.S.
   Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1; id. at § 3)). He concludes that the President
   possesses the constitutional authority to order federal employees to comply
   with his vaccine mandate, if they wish to avoid removal from office.
           I certainly agree that “[t]he entire ‘executive Power’ belongs to the
   President alone.” Seila Law, 140 S. Ct. at 2197. Contrast U.S. Const. art.
   I, § 1 (vesting the legislative power in a bicameral Congress); id. art. III, § 1
   (vesting the judicial power in “one supreme Court, and in such inferior
   Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish”). To be
   sure, “it would be impossible for one man to perform all the great business of
   the State.” Seila Law, 140 S. Ct. at 2197 (quotations omitted). So “the

           1
            Cf. NFIB v. OSHA, 142 S. Ct. 661, 665 (2022) (“A vaccination . . . cannot be
   undone at the end of the workday.”) (quotations omitted); Louisiana v. Biden, 55 F.4th
   1017, 1022 (5th Cir. 2022) (noting that “employees would have to undertake an irreversible
   decision—vaccination—in order to be compliant with this mandate”); see also Sambrano v.
   United Airlines, Inc., 45 F.4th 877, 878–79 (5th Cir. 2022) (Ho, J., concurring in denial of
   rehearing en banc) (same).

                                               39
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 40       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   Constitution assumes that lesser executive officers will assist the supreme
   Magistrate in discharging the duties of his trust.” Id. (quotations omitted).
   But “[t]hese lesser executive officers must remain accountable to the
   President, whose authority they wield.” Id.
           All of this means that the President should possess the constitutional
   authority under Article II to remove his subordinates from office. See, e.g.,
   Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 122, (1926) (“[W]hen the grant of the
   executive power is enforced by the express mandate to take care that the laws
   be faithfully executed, it emphasizes the necessity for including within the
   executive power as conferred the exclusive power of removal.”); Free Enter.
   Fund v. Pub. Co. Acct. Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 498 (2010) (insulating
   subordinates from removal “subverts the President’s ability to ensure that
   the laws are faithfully executed—as well as the public’s ability to pass
   judgment on his efforts”); Seila Law, 140 S. Ct. at 2203–04 (observing that
   “the threat of removal” allows the President to “meaningfully control[]”
   subordinates, and that “removal at will” is “the most direct method of
   presidential control”); Collins v. Yellen, 141 S. Ct. 1761, 1787 (2021) (“The
   President must be able to remove not just officers who disobey his commands
   but also those he finds negligent and inefficient, those who exercise their
   discretion in a way that is not intelligent or wise, those who have different
   views of policy, those who come from a competing political party who is dead
   set against [the President’s] agenda, and those in whom he has simply lost
   confidence.”) (cleaned up). 2

           2
             But see Collins v. Mnuchin, 938 F.3d 553, 614 (5th Cir. 2019) (en banc) (Higginson,
   J., dissenting in part) (“The Constitution affords sparse materials to resolve this
   question—only broad pronouncements that ‘[t]he executive Power shall be vested’ in the
   President and that ‘he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ Art. II §§ 1, 3.
   These clauses say nothing about removal of executive-branch officers.”).

                                                40
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 41    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

          In reality, however, the President actually controls surprisingly little
   of the Executive Branch. Only a tiny percentage of Executive Branch
   employees are subject to Presidential removal. The overwhelming majority
   of federal employees, by contrast, are protected against Presidential removal
   by civil service laws. Compare Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, Exec. Off.
   of   the      President,       Budget         of   the     United    States
   Government, Fiscal Year 2023, at 83 (2022) (4.2 million Executive
   Branch employees), with House Committee on Oversight and
   Reform,       United       States            Government      Policy      and
   Supporting Positions 209–15 (2020) (commonly known as the “Plum
   Book”) (fewer than four thousand Executive Branch employees are subject
   to removal at will by the President).
          The net result is that there are only a “small number of politically
   appointed leaders” who “enjoy only limited control of the mass of civil
   servants.” Eric Posner, And if Elected: What President Trump Could or
   Couldn’t Do, N.Y. Times, June 3, 2016. Federal civil service laws make it
   virtually impossible for a President to implement his vision without the active
   consent and cooperation of an army of unaccountable federal employees.
   And that presents a rather curious distortion of our constitutional structure.
   The Constitution requires the President, the Vice President, and every
   member of Congress to stand for re-election if they wish to continue holding
   federal office and exercising federal power. Meanwhile, countless Executive
   Branch employees have the ability to influence or implement federal policy
   in their capacity as subordinates of the President—yet they enjoy a de facto
   form of life tenure, akin to that of Article III judges. See U.S. Const. art.
   III, § 1 (“The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold
   their Offices during good Behaviour”).
          It’s a phenomenon that legal scholars have identified (and decried) for
   decades. “The critical fact of civil service today is that covered employees

                                           41
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 42   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   are rarely discharged from government for inadequately doing their jobs. The
   civil service system has provided the equivalent of life tenure (at least until
   retirement) once a brief probation period is passed, absent what the
   government considers a serious act of misconduct.” Gerald E. Frug, Does the
   Constitution Prevent the Discharge of Civil Service Employees?, 124 U. Pa. L.
   Rev. 942, 945 (1976).          See also Philip K. Howard, Not
   Accountable: Rethinking The Constitutionality Of
   Public Employee Unions 136 (2023) (“Federal government . . . is an
   accountability-free zone. More federal employees die on the job than are
   terminated for poor performance. Regular stories emerge of employees who
   cannot be terminated despite outrageous behavior.”).
          Not surprisingly, these “tenure-like protections for the civil service
   have sharply reduced the president’s ability to change the direction of the
   permanent bureaucracy.” John Yoo, Unitary, Executive, or Both?, 76 U.
   Chi. L. Rev. 1935, 1956 (2009).
          What’s more, federal employees know it—and they take full-throated
   advantage of it. As anyone who has ever held a senior position in the
   Executive Branch can attest, federal employees often regard themselves, not
   as subordinates duty-bound to carry out the President’s vision whether they
   personally agree with it or not, but as a free-standing interest group entitled
   to make demands on their superiors. See, e.g., Philip K. Howard, Civil Service
   Reform: Reassert the President’s Constitutional Authority, The American
   Interest, Jan. 28, 2017 (“The slow dissipation of presidential power is a
   story rich with irony—designed to avoid interest group capture, the civil
   service became its own special interest.”).
          As a result, “Presidents can have a hard time implementing their
   agenda if civil servants collectively drag their feet or lack the competence to
   carry out the President’s orders.” Jason Marisam, The President’s Agency

                                         42
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 43    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   Selection Powers, 65 Admin. L. Rev. 821, 863 (2013). “Even if a president
   has the perfect ally running an agency, that ally may still fail to produce the
   desired results if the ally runs into resistance from his civil servants.” Id.
          Indeed, one scholar has pointedly noted that the single “biggest
   obstacle” for any President “is not the separation of powers” designed by
   our Founders, “but the millions of federal employees who are supposed to
   work for him.” Posner, supra (emphasis added). “These employees can drag
   their feet, leak to the press, threaten to resign and employ other tactics to
   undermine [a President’s] initiatives if they object to them.” Id. “They’re
   also hard to fire, thanks to Civil Service protections.” Id. See, e.g., Marisam,
   supra, at 863–64 (“For example, the efforts of President Reagan’s EPA
   Administrator, Ann Gorsuch, to slow down and halt EPA regulatory actions
   was marked by staff resistance to the Administration’s attempt to change the
   agency’s goals.”) (cleaned up).
          In an appropriate case, we should consider whether laws that limit the
   President’s power to remove Executive Branch employees are consistent
   with the vesting of executive power exclusively in the President. See, e.g.,
   Howard, Not Accountable, supra, at 140 (“[T]he president and
   federal supervisory officials must have authority to manage personnel . . . .
   This requires, among other remedies, invalidating specific provisions of the
   Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 that . . . disempower the president and his
   appointees from removing officers.”); Yoo, supra, at 1957 (“[P]residents
   consistently followed a common position toward the civil service that sought
   to maintain the right to fire federal employees in order to guarantee a uniform
   execution of federal law.”); Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, and
   Anthony J. Colangelo, The Unitary Executive in the Modern Era, 1945–2004,
   90 Iowa L. Rev. 601, 660 (2005) (“[T]he idea that the civil service laws
   limit the president’s power to remove is of fairly recent vintage dating back

                                          43
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563          Page: 44   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                   No. 22-40043

   only to 1974.”); Frug, supra, at 949 (noting that “the President’s absolute
   power of removal of federal employees was established in principle” in 1789).
          This is not that case, however. That’s because the Government
   doesn’t challenge the validity of the CSRA or invoke the President’s Article
   II removal power in this case. It doesn’t do so in its briefing. And it
   reconfirmed during oral argument that it doesn’t challenge the
   constitutionality of the CSRA here. During oral argument, I asked whether
   the President has the power under the Constitution to remove any Executive
   Branch employee, notwithstanding laws like the CSRA. Counsel for the
   Government responded: “Plaintiffs say periodically we haven’t challenged
   the constitutionality of the CSRA. That’s absolutely right—we have not.”
   Oral Arg. at 5:40-6:23.
          The argument is thus forfeited. We therefore have no occasion to
   decide whether this case implicates the President’s constitutional power to
   remove employees who are unwilling to faithfully execute his policy vision
   for our country—or if, instead, the President is impermissibly leveraging
   (and therefore exceeding) his removal power in order to meddle in the private
   lives of federal employees. See post, at 52 (Higginson, J., concurring in part
   and dissenting in part) (noting that the President’s vaccine mandate
   “requires federal employees to ‘protect themselves’ against COVID-19 by
   getting FDA-approved vaccinations”); cf. Louisiana v. Biden, 55 F.4th 1017,
   1030 (5th Cir. 2022) (“unlike the non-discrimination, E-Verify, Beck rights,
   and sick leave orders, which govern the conduct of employers, the [President’s
   federal contractor] vaccine mandate purports to govern the conduct of

                                        44
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 45       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   employees – and more than their conduct, purports to govern their individual
   healthcare decisions”). 3

           3
              See also Horvath v. City of Leander, 946 F.3d 787, 799 (5th Cir. 2020) (Ho, J.,
   concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part) (observing that a municipal vaccine
   mandate “forces [an employee] to choose between sacrificing his faith or working under
   unequal conditions”); BST Holdings, L.L.C. v. Occupational Safety & Health Admin., 17
   F.4th 604, 618–19 (5th Cir. 2021) (OSHA vaccine mandate implicates “the liberty of
   individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions”);
   Sambrano v. United Airlines, Inc., 19 F.4th 839, 841 (5th Cir. 2021) (Ho, J., dissenting)
   (“Vaccine mandates . . . present a crisis of conscience for many people of faith. It forces
   them to choose between the two most profound obligations they will ever assume—holding
   true to their religious commitments and feeding and housing their children.”); Sambrano
   v. United Airlines, Inc., 2022 WL 486610, *9 (5th Cir. Feb. 17, 2022) (“United has
   presented plaintiffs with two options: violate their religious convictions or lose all pay and
   benefits indefinitely. That is an impossible choice for plaintiffs who want to remain faithful
   but must put food on the table.”).

                                                45
Case: 22-40043         Document: 00516687563              Page: 46   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

   Haynes, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting
   in part:
                                      I.      Concurrence
          I concur in the en banc court’s judgment that we have jurisdiction over
   pre-enforcement challenges to President Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal
   employees. I also concur in the affirmance of the preliminary injunction as
   to the parties in this case, but I respectfully dissent from the affirmance of the
   grant of a nationwide injunction.
                                     II.      Dissent 1
          The district court noted that it was “cognizant of the ‘equitable and
   constitutional questions raised by the rise of nationwide injunctions.’” Feds
   for Medical Freedom v. Biden, 581 F. Supp. 3d 826, 836 (S.D. Tex. 2022)
   (quoting Dep’t of Homeland Sec. v. New York, 140 S. Ct. 599, 601 (2020)
   (Gorsuch, J., concurring)). Nevertheless, the district court concluded that
   tailoring relief here was impractical. 581 F. Supp. 3d at 836. According to
   the district court, the fact that the lead Plaintiff—Feds for Medical
   Freedom—has more than 6000 members spread across every state and in
   nearly every federal agency means that limiting the injunction’s scope would
   “prove unwieldy and would only cause more confusion.” Id. (quotation
   omitted).
          However, a federal court’s “constitutionally prescribed role is to
   vindicate the individual rights of the people appearing before it,” and
   accordingly “[a] plaintiff’s remedy must be tailored to redress the plaintiff’s
   particular injury.”        Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1933–34 (2018)
   (emphasis added); see also Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 140 S. Ct. at 600 (Gorsuch,

          1
              Judges Higginson and Willett join in Section II.

                                                46
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 47       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   J., concurring) (“[W]hen a court . . . order[s] the government to take (or not
   take) some action with respect to those who are strangers to the suit, it is hard
   to see how the court could still be acting in the judicial role of resolving cases
   and controversies.”); Georgia v. President of the United States, 46 F.4th 1283,
   1303 (11th Cir. 2022) (“In their universal reach to plaintiffs and nonplaintiffs
   alike, nationwide injunctions push against the boundaries of judicial power,
   and very often impede the proper functioning of our federal court system.”).
   This seems especially true where, as here, several district courts (and two
   circuit courts) across the country have come out differently from this district
   court on these issues. 2 For instance, the Government noted that it has
   successfully defended the executive order in the Fourth Circuit 3 and is
   currently defending the dismissal of similar challenges in the Third and D.C.
   Circuits,4 “[b]ut those cases are rendered essentially meaningless by this
   nationwide injunction.” 5

           2
            At least twelve district courts previously rejected challenges to Executive Order
   14043 for various reasons. See Feds for Med. Freedom, 30 F.4th at 505 n.1 (collecting cases).
           3
              The Fourth Circuit, like the panel opinion in this case, determined that the CSRA
   deprived the district court of jurisdiction. Accordingly, it vacated the district court’s
   judgment denying relief to the plaintiffs on the merits and dismissed the suit for lack of
   jurisdiction. Rydie v. Biden, No. 21-2359, 2022 WL 1153249, at *8 (4th Cir. Apr. 19, 2022).
           4
             The Government subsequently noted that the D.C. Circuit ruled in its favor. See
   Payne v. Biden, --- F.4th ----, 2023 WL 2576742 (D.C. Cir. 2023).
           5
              The majority opinion misunderstands my point here: we should generally only
   address the parties’ request for a preliminary injunction, particularly in this circumstance,
   where other litigants are raising the same issues in other circuits. In other words, I am less
   concerned with whether we are creating circuit splits than whether we are appropriately
   limiting the scope of our decisions to the parties before us. The reasoning other circuits
   use to resolve these issues is therefore not my point. That said, the majority is plainly
   incorrect that its opinion doesn’t truly conflict with other courts’ decisions. The other
   circuits’ jurisdictional rulings are far from “merely incidental”—they are wholly fatal to
   the plaintiffs’ claims. Therefore, a nationwide ruling which the majority opinion seems to

                                                47
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 48        Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

           Nor is tailored injunctive relief unworkable here. The district court
   could direct Feds for Medical Freedom to submit the names of its members
   to the Government and employing agencies in order to provide them relief.
   If it has not already done so, Feds for Medical Freedom also could provide
   either online proof of membership or physical cards to that effect that the
   unvaccinated individual member employees could utilize as proof to avoid
   any adverse employment actions. Additionally, as the Government notes,
   “[a]s for the court’s view that tailored relief would be unworkable because
   [Feds for Medical Freedom] ‘is actively adding new member[s],’ it is far from
   clear that [Feds for Medical Freedom] has standing to litigate on behalf” of
   potential or future members. 6 In contrast, the plaintiffs wholly failed to meet
   their burden to show that tailoring was not workable. See, e.g., Ashcroft v.
   ACLU, 542 U.S. 656, 666 (2004) (on appeal from grant of preliminary
   injunction, the party who “bears the burden of proof on the ultimate
   question” bears the same burden on appeal); Enter. Int’l, Inc. v. Corporacion
   Estatal Petrolera Ecuatoriana, 762 F.2d 464, 472 (5th Cir. 1982) (“[T]he
   district court must remember that a preliminary injunction is an
   extraordinary and drastic remedy, and that the movant has a heavy burden of
   persuading the district court that all four elements are satisfied. Thus, if
   the movant does not succeed in carrying its burden on any one of the four
   prerequisites, a preliminary injunction may not issue and, if issued, will be

   find overrules the other circuits is also problematic because we have no greater jurisdiction
   to grant relief (or make decisions about federal court jurisdiction) than the other circuits.
           6
              The majority opinion’s last substantive paragraph notes that this case “only
   involves a preliminary injunction” which has the “purpose to maintain the status quo until
   the parties have the chance to adjudicate the merits.” Ante, at 37 (emphasis added).
   Exactly—we should not address the interests of non-parties where, as here, it is certainly
   feasible to tailor the injunctive relief to the plaintiffs.

                                                48
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563             Page: 49   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                      No. 22-40043

   vacated on appeal.” (internal quotation marks, alteration, and citation
   omitted) (emphasis added)).
                               III.     Conclusion
          Accordingly, the district court erred in issuing a nationwide injunction
   when a tailored injunction is not unworkable or impossible to apply.
   Therefore, I dissent from the court’s decision to leave the nationwide
   injunction in place rather than reversing the portion of the injunction that
   extends beyond the plaintiffs.

                                          49
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 50    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge, joined by Southwick, Circuit
   Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part:
          This case begins with the question of whether we have jurisdiction to
   review the President’s vaccine requirement for Executive Branch employees.
   If the answer is yes, we also must decide whether the President’s order
   exceeded his authority to require his employees to get an FDA-approved
   vaccination during a pandemic that has killed over a million Americans.
          For the wrong reasons, our court correctly concludes that we do have
   jurisdiction. But contrary to a dozen federal courts—and having left a
   government motion to stay the district court’s injunction pending for more
   than a year—our court still refuses to say why the President does not have
   the power to regulate workplace safety for his employees.
                                       ***
          The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), 5 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq.,
   generally precludes subject-matter jurisdiction over pre-enforcement
   challenges to Executive Branch employment policies. For that reason, I
   cannot agree with our court’s blueprint for covered employees to short
   circuit the CSRA by filing a federal lawsuit against workplace regulations
   before they are disciplined. Now, litigants can forum shop challenges to
   federal employment policies in our court, even though Congress directed
   their cases to the Federal Circuit. However, because I conclude the CSRA
   does not provide meaningful judicial review of the plaintiffs’ pre-
   enforcement challenge and Congress did not intend the CSRA to foreclose
   judicial review of their separation-of-powers claim, I concur that we have
   jurisdiction over this claim.
          On the merits, our court is wrong that the plaintiffs are entitled to a
   preliminary injunction, let alone one that sweeps nationwide. The vaccine
   requirement fell within the President’s power to regulate his employees. Nor

                                         50
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 51   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   have the plaintiffs shown that they are likely to suffer an irreparable injury
   from the requirement in the absence of injunctive relief. Without identifying
   any reason that the requirement exceeded Presidential authority or any
   irreparable injury that the plaintiffs will suffer, our court concludes that such
   an injunction, which overruled all other federal courts that left the mandate
   untouched, is justified.
          Setting aside the substance of what our court says on the merits, I
   disagree with how we say it. Today, our court affirms a nationwide injunction,
   put in place over a year ago, without explanation or analysis of any of the
   preliminary injunction factors. This method of rubberstamping a district
   court’s nullification of the President’s authority over the Executive Branch
   is unprecedented and improper on en banc rehearing. The People’s trust in
   our independence is undermined when we answer vital constitutional
   questions without showing our work—especially when the questions before
   us “are inescapably entangled in political controversies” and “touch the
   passions of the day.” Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S.
   123, 149 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
                                          I.
          By September 2021, more than 600,000 Americans had died from
   COVID-19. Covid Data Tracker Weekly Review: Easy as 1-2-3, Ctrs. for
   Disease Control & Prevention (Interpretive Summary for Aug. 27,
   2021). Millions were missing work each week. Educational Attainment for
   Adults Not Working at Time of Survey, by Main Reason for Not Working and
   Source Used to Meet Spending Needs, Weekly 37 Household Pulse Survey: Sept. 1
   – Sept. 13, U.S. Census Bureau (Sept. 21, 2021).
          To combat those threats to “the health and safety of the [f]ederal
   workforce and the efficiency of the civil service,” on September 9, 2021, the
   President issued Executive Order 14043. Exec. Order No. 14043, 86 Fed.

                                          51
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 52      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   Reg. 50,989, 50,989 (Sept. 9, 2021). This order requires federal employees
   to “protect themselves” against COVID-19 by getting FDA-approved
   vaccinations. Id. Specifically, the President directed executive agencies to
   implement “a program to require COVID-19 vaccination for all of its
   [f]ederal employees, with exceptions only as required by law.” Id. at 50,990.
          Pursuant to the Executive Order, the Safer Federal Workforce Task
   Force issued guidance stating that covered employees would “need to be
   fully vaccinated by November 22, 2021.”           Vaccinations, Safer Fed.
   Workforce, https://perma.cc/G8T6-K8XN. The guidance said that
   agencies “may be required to provide a reasonable accommodation to
   employees” who did not get vaccinated “because of a disability” or “a
   sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance.” Id.
          The guidance also explained how agencies could enforce the vaccine
   requirement.    Agencies should first provide “an appropriate period of
   education or counseling” to employees who initially fail to comply with the
   requirement. Id. Afterwards, if an employee still does not get vaccinated, an
   agency could “issue a letter of reprimand, followed by a short suspension,”
   which would “generally” last “14 days or less.” Id. The agency could
   propose that the employee be removed if the employee does not comply with
   the requirement during the suspension. Id. The guidance further noted that
   “[e]mployees who violate lawful orders,” like the requirement, “are subject
   to discipline, . . . including termination or removal.” Id.
          In December 2021, Feds for Medical Freedom, individual federal
   employees, and other plaintiffs challenged Executive Order 14043 in federal
   district court. They alleged that the Executive Order is ultra vires because it
   exceeded the President’s constitutional and statutory authority, and they
   challenged the Executive Order as arbitrary and capricious under the
   Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706. The plaintiffs moved

                                          52
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563              Page: 53      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   for a preliminary injunction, which the district court granted. See Feds for
   Med. Freedom v. Biden, 581 F. Supp. 3d 826, 836-37 (S.D. Tex. 2022), vacated,
   30 F.4th 503 (5th Cir. 2022), reh’g granted, 37 F.4th 1093. In granting the
   injunction, the district court split from a dozen other district courts who had
   already rejected similar challenges. 1 See Feds for Med. Freedom, 30 F.4th at
   505 n.1 (collecting cases).
           The government appealed and moved for a stay pending appeal. A
   divided panel carried the motion with the case, see Feds for Med. Freedom v.
   Biden, 25 F.4th 354 (5th Cir. 2022) (per curiam), and a divided panel then
   vacated the injunction on the basis that the CSRA precluded the district
   court’s exercise of jurisdiction, see Feds for Med. Freedom v. Biden, 30 F.4th
   503, 511 (5th Cir. 2022). Our court granted rehearing en banc. Feds for Med.
   Freedom v. Biden, 37 F.4th 1093 (5th Cir. 2022) (per curiam).
                                              II.
           Congress’s constitutional power to establish inferior federal courts
   includes the power to define their jurisdiction. See U.S. Const. art III, § 1;
   Lockerty v. Phillips, 319 U.S. 182, 187 (1943). Pursuant to this power,
   Congress can preclude district courts from exercising jurisdiction by
   requiring certain claims “to proceed exclusively through a statutory review
   scheme.” Elgin v. Dep’t of Treasury, 567 U.S. 1, 10 (2012).
           In determining whether a statute precludes district court jurisdiction,
   we consider whether Congress’s intent to do so is “fairly discernible in the

           1
             The district court’s decision also conflicts with the Fourth Circuit’s and D.C.
   Circuit’s conclusion that Congress precluded jurisdiction over a similar challenge to the
   vaccine requirement. See Payne v. Biden, --- F.4th ----, 2023 WL 2576742 (D.C. Cir. 2023);
   Rydie v. Biden, No. 21-2359, 2022 WL 1153249 (4th Cir. Apr. 19, 2022). Another appeal is
   pending before the Third Circuit. See Smith v. Biden, No. 21-CV-19457, 2021 WL 5195688
   (D.N.J. Nov. 8, 2021), appeal docketed, No. 21-3091 (3d Cir. Nov. 10, 2021).

                                              53
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 54        Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

   statutory scheme.” Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U.S. 200, 207
   (1994). If so, we decide whether the plaintiffs’ claims “are of the type
   Congress intended to be reviewed within this statutory structure.” Id. at 212.
   Three factors are relevant to this inquiry: whether (1) “a finding of preclusion
   could foreclose all meaningful judicial review,” (2) the claims are “wholly
   collateral to a statute’s review provisions,” and (3) the claims are “outside
   the agency’s expertise.” Id. at 212-13 (cleaned up).
           Applying this Supreme Court test, the CSRA generally precludes
   district court jurisdiction over pre-enforcement challenges to Executive
   Branch employment policies.               But, as I explain below, the plaintiffs’
   separation-of-powers claim is the rare type of pre-enforcement challenge that
   Congress did not intend to preclude in the CSRA. Therefore, I agree
   narrowly in outcome with the majority that we have jurisdiction over
   plaintiffs’ pre-enforcement challenge to the Executive Order as ultra vires. 2
           But the majority takes two significant wrong turns in reaching its
   jurisdictional conclusion, which rejects Supreme Court precedent and
   imperils Congress’s CSRA regime. First, the majority is incorrect that
   plaintiffs are not challenging a “personnel action” within the meaning of the
   CSRA. In addition, the majority is mistaken that Congress did not intend the
   CSRA to preclude jurisdiction over pre-enforcement challenges to personnel
   actions covered by the statute. This second error of our court is grave and
   lets any covered employee facing proposed discipline rush to federal court
   ahead of the statutory timeline contrary to Supreme Court precedent and the
   text of the CSRA.

           2
             With the benefit of en banc argument, I have reconsidered my initial view that the
   district court likely lacked jurisdiction over the entire case. Feds for Med. Freedom v. Biden,
   25 F.4th 354, 356 (5th Cir. 2022) (Higginson, J., dissenting), though I continue to believe
   that jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ APA claim is precluded.

                                                 54
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 55   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

                                          A.
          The CSRA imposed a “comprehensive and integrated review
   scheme” for “personnel action taken against federal employees.” United
   States v. Fausto, 484 U.S. 439, 454, 455 (1988). This system replaced a set of
   “haphazard” and “patchwork” “arrangements for administrative and
   judicial review of personnel action,” which had resulted in a “wide
   variation[] in [district court] decisions issued on the same or similar
   matters.” Id. at 444-45 (cleaned up). Among other reforms, the CSRA
   created the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), “a quasi-judicial
   agency with the power to adjudicate disputes arising from adverse personnel
   actions taken against covered federal employees.” Zummer v. Sallet, 37 F.4th
   996, 1003 (5th Cir. 2022), cert. denied, --- S. Ct. ----, 2023 WL 2563318 (2023).
          Under the CSRA’s “elaborate new framework,” challenges to
   “minor adverse action[s],” “major adverse action[s],” and “prohibited
   personnel practices” are channeled into separate procedural tracks. Fausto,
   484 U.S. at 443, 445-47 (cleaned up); see 5 U.S.C. §§ 1212, 1214, 2301, 2302,
   7502, 7503, 7512, 7513; see also 5 U.S.C. § 4303 (review of actions based on
   unacceptable performance).
          Minor adverse actions, meaning suspensions lasting fourteen days or
   less, are not appealable to the MSPB. See 5 U.S.C. § 7503; Fausto, 484 U.S.
   at 446. Instead, an employee against whom such a suspension is proposed is
   entitled to certain procedural protections, including notice, an opportunity
   to respond, representation by an attorney, and a written decision. 5 U.S.C.
   § 7503(b)(1)-(4).
          Major adverse actions, including removal and suspension for more
   than fourteen days, id. § 7512(1)-(5); Fausto, 484 U.S. at 446-47, trigger a
   similar set of safeguards. When such an action is proposed against an
   employee, he or she is generally entitled to “at least [thirty] days’ advance

                                          55
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 56   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   written notice,” “a reasonable time . . . not less than [seven] days . . . to
   answer,” representation by an attorney, and a written decision. 5 U.S.C.
   § 7513(b)(1)-(4).
          Unlike minor adverse actions, major adverse actions can be reviewed
   in federal court. But this channel is narrowly prescribed. An employee
   “against whom [a major adverse] action is taken . . . is entitled to appeal to
   the [MSPB],” id. § 7513(d), and the United States Court of Appeals for the
   Federal Circuit has jurisdiction over appeals from the MSPB’s final orders
   and decisions. See id. § 7703(a)(1), (b)(1)(A).
           Finally, the CSRA includes a mechanism for employees to challenge
   a “personnel action” that is a “prohibited personnel practice.”             Id.
   § 2302(a)(1), (a)(2), (b). The statute lists eleven types of personnel actions
   and includes a residual clause that covers “any other significant change in
   duties, responsibilities, or working conditions.” Id. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii). An
   employee may challenge a prohibited personnel practice by making an
   allegation to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Id. § 1214(a)(1)(A), (a)(3);
   see id. § 1212(a)(2). OSC must investigate the allegation, id. § 1214(a)(1)(A),
   and may petition the MSPB for corrective action, id. § 1214(b)(2)(C). The
   Federal Circuit can review a final order of the MSPB in response to such a
   petition. Id. §§ 1214(c), 7703(b)-(c). Therefore, where prohibited personnel
   practices are concerned, access to the MSPB and the Federal Circuit depends
   on OSC’s discretion with limited exceptions. See id. § 1214(a)(3) (exceptions
   for cases where (i) other law provides a right of direct appeal to the MSPB or
   (ii) OSC declines to seek corrective action after terminating an investigation
   into retaliation as described in § 2302(b)(8) and § 2302(b)(9)(A)(i), (B), (C),
   and (D)).

                                         56
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563              Page: 57      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

                                              B.
           The Supreme Court has held that the CSRA “forecloses judicial
   review” for employees “to whom the CSRA grants administrative and
   judicial review” as well as for those employees “to whom the CSRA denies
   statutory review.” Elgin, 567 U.S. at 11.
           Specifically, in Elgin v. Department of Treasury, the Court, in an
   opinion written by Justice Thomas, decided that the CSRA precluded
   jurisdiction over employees’ constitutional claims challenging their removal
   from federal employment. 567 U.S. 1, 8 (2012). And in United States v.
   Fausto, the Court, in an opinion written by Justice Scalia, decided that the
   exclusion of certain employees from the CSRA review scheme for major
   adverse actions precluded jurisdiction over those employees’ challenges to
   those actions. 484 U.S. 439, 455 (1988).
           These precedents control here.
                                              1.
           To begin, because the vaccine requirement is a “significant change in
   [an employee’s] . . . working conditions,” 5 U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii), the
   CSRA gives plaintiffs a mechanism for “administrative and judicial review,”
   Elgin, 567 U.S. at 11.
           “Working conditions” are the circumstances under which an
   employee performs his or her job. 3 The vaccine requirement changes those

           3
              See Fort Stewart Schs. v. Fed. Lab. Relations Auth., 495 U.S. 641, 645 (1990)
   (explaining, with reference to different CSRA provision, that “working conditions . . .
   refers, in isolation, only to the ‘circumstances’ or ‘state of affairs’ attendant to one’s
   performance of a job”); Hesse v. Dep’t of State, 217 F.3d 1372, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2000)
   (defining the phrase in § 2302 to mean “the physical conditions under which an employee
   labors”); Mahoney v. Donovan, 721 F.3d 633, 636 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (defining the phrase in

                                              57
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 58       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   circumstances.        Employees covered by the requirement have to get
   vaccinated before going to work and work only with other vaccinated or
   exempted employees. Being vaccinated against a pandemic disease and being
   surrounded by vaccinated people are circumstances under which an
   employee does his job according to any test: vaccination is a physical
   condition of labor because it affects the employee’s body during work, Hesse,
   217 F.3d at 1378; vaccination manifestly impacts absenteeism and “the
   efficiency of the civil service,” Exec. Order No. 14043, 86 Fed. Reg. at
   50,990; see Mahoney, 721 F.3d at 636, by reducing the incidence and severity
   of disease; and vaccination is a “daily, concrete parameter[]” of federal
   employment because it concerns “the provision of necessary . . .
   resources”—shots that ensure employees can stay healthy and do their jobs,
   Turner, 502 F. Supp. 3d at 367. 4 A vaccination requirement is therefore a
   “working condition” within the meaning of § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii).

   § 2302 as concerning actions that “affect the ability of [employees] to do their jobs
   efficiently and effectively”); Turner v. U.S. Agency for Glob. Media, 502 F. Supp. 3d 333,
   367 (D.D.C. 2020) (defining the phrase in § 2302 as “generally refer[ring] to the daily,
   concrete parameters of a job, for example, hours, discrete assignments, and the provision
   of necessary equipment and resources”); see also Sistek v. Dep’t of Veterans Affs., 955 F.3d
   948, 955 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (“[A] retaliatory investigation, either on its own or as part of a
   broader set of circumstances, may . . . rise[] to the level of a significant change in working
   conditions.” (cleaned up)).
           4
              Many Executive Branch employees do not have the luxury to decide for
   themselves to put up plexiglass barriers, require attorneys to wear masks, and conduct
   judicial proceedings by videoconference, as we can order at our discretion. See, e.g., Order,
   General Dkt. No. 2020-5, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (authorizing
   panels to conduct remote oral arguments). Indeed, some federal courts mandated
   vaccinations for court employees and lawyers appearing for in-person oral argument. See
   Order Regarding Masking, Vaccination, and COVID-19 Self-Certification, General Order
   No. 21-009, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. State courts took
   similar measures. See Keshia Clukey, Four Unvaccinated Judges in New York Face Sanctions,
   Removal, Bloomberg Law (Mar. 23, 2022).

                                                58
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563           Page: 59    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

          Statutory context shows that vaccination is a working condition. The
   CSRA lists twelve categories of “personnel action” in § 2302(a)(2)(A),
   starting with nine conventional types of “individualized employment
   decisions,” as the majority puts it.         These include “appointment,”
   “promotion,” “disciplinary or corrective action,” “detail, transfer, or
   reassignment,”      “reinstatement,”        “restoration,     “reemployment,”
   “performance evaluation,” and “decision[s] concerning pay, benefits, or
   awards, or concerning education or training.” 5 U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(i)-
   (ix). Notably, then, the list shifts. Romanette xi refers in relevant part to
   “the implementation of any nondisclosure policy.” Id. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xi)
   (emphasis added).       And romanette x concerns “a decision to order
   psychiatric testing or examination”—a medical procedure that very well
   could occur outside the workplace. Id. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(x). So, contrary to
   the majority’s view, § 2302(a)(2)(A) does include workplace medical
   policies that are “government-wide” and require “medical decisions made
   outside the workplace.”
          Indeed, Congress has amended § 2302(a)(2)(A) several times to
   broaden its scope to include policies like a workplace vaccine requirement.
   When first enacted, § 2302(a)(2)(A) consisted of romanettes i to ix (the nine
   conventional employment decisions listed above) and a modified version of
   what is now romanette xii: “any other significant change in duties or
   responsibilities which is inconsistent with the employee’s salary or grade level.”
   CSRA, Pub. L. No. 95-454, ch. 23, § 2302(a)(2)(A)(x), 92 Stat. 1111 (Oct. 13,
   1978) (emphasis added). This language made a qualifying change in “duties
   or responsibilities” dependent on an individual employee’s position. And
   originally, psychiatric testing, nondisclosure policies, and significant changes
   in working conditions were not covered personnel actions.
          Then, in 1994, Congress added the “psychiatric testing or
   examination” romanette and edited romanette xii. See Act of Oct. 29, 1994,

                                          59
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563              Page: 60      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   Pub. L. No. 103-424, sec. 5, § 2302(a)(2)(A)(x), 108 Stat. 4361. Instead of
   “any other significant change in duties or responsibilities which is inconsistent
   with the employee’s salary or grade level,” the romanette was expanded to cover
   “any other significant change in duties, responsibilities or working
   conditions.”     Id. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(x), 108 Stat. 4361 (emphasis added).
   Finally, in 2012, Congress added the “nondisclosure policy” romanette. See
   Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012, Pub. L. No. 112-199,
   sec. 104, § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xi), 126 Stat. 1465.
           In sum, the “working conditions” phrase (i) substituted for a
   restrictive clause linking changes in “duties or responsibilities” to individual
   employee status, (ii) was added immediately after a romanette dealing with
   medical activities, and (iii) became the neighbor of a romanette about
   nondisclosure policies. Together, these amendments show that Congress
   understood the “working conditions” language to extend beyond the
   traditional types of individual employment decisions § 2302(a)(2)(A) had
   previously covered, to reach a workplace health policy like the vaccine
   requirement. 5

           5
             The majority relies on Gustafson v. Adkins, a Seventh Circuit case holding that
   placement of a hidden camera in a workplace changing area was not a “personnel action”
   under § 2302(a)(2)(A). 803 F.3d 883, 889 (7th Cir. 2015). Gustafson based this decision
   on dicta in Bush v. Lucas that “wiretapping” and “warrantless searches” would not be
   personnel actions within the CSRA. 462 U.S. 367, 385 n.28 (1983). But Lucas was decided
   almost a decade before Congress amended the CSRA to include the “working conditions”
   phrase. And it is difficult to see how the hidden camera at issue in Gustafson did not
   significantly change “working conditions” for the surveilled employees.
            The majority’s reliance on NFIB v. OSHA is also misplaced. 142 S. Ct. 661 (2022).
   That case held that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration lacked authority
   under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to issue a vaccine requirement for
   certain private employers because the statute empowered the agency “to set workplace
   safety standards, not broad public health measures,” and Congress had not spoken clearly

                                              60
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563              Page: 61       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

           The majority reads § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii) as excluding the vaccine
   requirement because the requirement is “government-wide, involves
   “medical decisions made outside the workplace,” and has “consequences
   long after the employee leaves the federal workforce.” This alternative
   reading is inconsistent with common sense and the text of the statute.
           First, the majority thinks “working conditions” refers only to
   “discrete employment decisions.”                 Under this interpretation, any
   employment policy that changed working conditions for more than one
   employee would not be a “significant change in . . . working conditions.” 5
   U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii). But there is no one-at-a-time requirement in
   the text of § 2302(a)(2)(A). Like all general policies, the vaccine requirement
   changes working conditions for each individual employee who is covered by
   it.
           Next, the majority reasons that “working conditions” cannot refer to
   “medical decisions made outside the workplace.” Yet the majority fails to
   explain why medical decisions that impact the circumstances under which a
   job is performed—indeed, as we have seen globally, make work possible
   during a pandemic—are not working conditions, regardless of where the
   medical decision is made or the duration of its effects.
           To the extent the majority argues that medical decisions made outside
   the workplace are not covered by § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii), the majority draws a
   line, absent from the statute, based on where the conduct targeted by an

   in “authorizing [OSHA] to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.”
   Id. at 665 (cleaned up). The jurisdictional issue in this case is not whether the President
   had authority under the CSRA to require vaccinations, but rather whether such a
   requirement changed working conditions for affected employees. And in NFIB v. OSHA,
   the Court accepted that COVID-19 posed occupational risks; the problem was that
   OSHA’s requirement went beyond those risks to address “general public health.” Id. at
   666.

                                               61
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 62       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   employment policy occurs. If the majority is right, a policy that promotes a
   “Drug-Free Federal Workplace” by prohibiting employees from using illegal
   drugs outside work, as President Reagan enacted, would not be a significant
   change in working conditions. 6 See Exec. Order No. 12,564, 51 Fed. Reg.
   32,889, 32,889-90 (1986). Similarly, under this novel interpretation, a ban
   on employees drinking liquor before work, requiring them to be sober at
   work, would not be a significant change in working conditions. A policy that
   employees have to use birth control outside work in order to refrain from
   being pregnant at work would not be a significant change in working
   conditions. Conversely, according to the majority’s logic, if the Executive
   Order or guidance had only required employees to receive the vaccine (or
   birth control) at work, the requirement would fall within § 2302(a)(2)(A).
   This arbitrary distinction ignores that there is a change in “working
   conditions” when the effects of a policy are felt at work, irrespective of the
   initial place where the policy must be followed.
           And if the majority argues that medical decisions made at the
   workplace are not covered by § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii), that reading is contrary
   to the plain meaning of the text as courts have interpreted it. See, e.g., Fort
   Stewart Schs., 495 U.S. at 645; Hesse, 217 F.3d at 1378; Mahoney, 721 F.3d at
   636; Turner, 502 F. Supp. 3d at 367. Under the majority’s interpretation, a
   directive that an employee receive any sort of medical treatment at work in
   order to continue working—like an order that an employee take antimalarial

           6
             Our court found that President Reagan’s order survived a facial constitutional
   challenge. See NTEU v. Bush, 891 F.2d 99, 102 (5th Cir. 1989). Prior to this appeal, relying
   on the Supreme Court dicta that warrantless searches are not personnel actions, see supra
   note 5, the district court had found that the CSRA did not preclude jurisdiction over a
   challenge to the warrantless uranalysis testing aspect of President Reagan’s program. See
   NTEU v. Reagan, 651 F. Supp. 1199, 1200-02 (E.D. La. 1987). As I explained, because of
   amendments to the statute, the district court’s reasoning in reliance on this dicta is no
   longer persuasive.

                                               62
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 63       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   medicine while detailed to a tropical environment—wouldn’t be a change in
   that employee’s working conditions. The employee told to swallow the pills
   at her desk might be surprised to hear that news.
           Finally, the majority says that § 2302(a)(2)(A)(xii) “only include[s]
   conditions that last for the duration of the employee’s job tenure.” The
   majority does not explain why vaccinations, which may not last forever or
   even for the entire term of employment, violate this rule.                       But more
   importantly, the statute does not exclude a change in the circumstances of
   work that has persistent or permanent effects on the employee from the term
   “working conditions.” Like the majority’s other attempts to limit the scope
   of “working conditions,” this constraint has no basis in the text of the statute.
           For those reasons, § 2302 provides a vehicle for review of the vaccine
   requirement under the CSRA, and Congress’s intent to preclude judicial
   review over challenges to the requirement is fairly discernible within the
   statutory scheme. See Elgin, 567 U.S. at 11.
                                                2.
           Were we to assume that the vaccine requirement cannot be challenged
   under § 2302, the CSRA still generally precludes pre-enforcement challenges
   to employment policies that, if violated, would result in discipline. 7 This is
   because the CSRA (i) provides for post-enforcement review of major adverse
   actions like removal, see 5 U.S.C. § 7513(d), and (ii) confers pre-enforcement
   due process protections to employees against whom minor and major adverse

           7
              As I explain below, the requirement has been enforced against at least some of the
   plaintiffs because disciplinary actions have been taken against them, and this suit challenges
   those disciplinary actions. But if this suit is conceived of as a true pre-enforcement
   challenge, as the majority insists—for example, if this suit only challenged the requirement
   insofar as the requirement might be used to terminate the plaintiffs in the future—then the
   CSRA still precludes pre-enforcement challenges for the reasons stated in this section.

                                                63
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563          Page: 64   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   actions are proposed without providing those or other employees with
   immediate review, see id. §§ 7503(b)(1)-(4), 7513(b)(1)-(4). In other words,
   the CSRA gives statutory review to some employees (those against whom
   major adverse actions have been taken) and not others (those against whom
   major adverse actions have not been taken). Since the CSRA denies statutory
   review to employees before they violate a policy and disciplinary action is
   taken against them, Congress’s intent to preclude jurisdiction over pre-
   enforcement challenges is fairly discernible in the statute. See Elgin, 567 U.S.
   at 11.
            This conclusion follows from the logic of Fausto. There, the Supreme
   Court considered whether the CSRA’s “withholding of remedy” from
   certain employees “was meant to preclude judicial review for those
   employees, or rather merely to leave them free to pursue the remedies that
   had been available before enactment of the CSRA.” 484 U.S. at 443-44.
   Fausto, who had been suspended for thirty days from his job as an
   administrator at a “Young Adult Conservation Corps camp,” was a
   “nonpreference member of the excepted service.” Id. at 441 & n.1. The
   CSRA does not include nonpreference excepted service members in the
   definition of employees covered for minor and major adverse actions, see 5
   U.S.C. § 7511(a)(1), and so the CSRA did not give Fausto a way to obtain
   administrative review of his suspension and then appeal to the Federal
   Circuit. See Fausto, 484 U.S. at 447-48. The Court concluded that “the
   absence of provision for these employees to obtain judicial review” is a
   “manifestation of a considered congressional judgment that they should not
   have statutory entitlement to review for [minor and major adverse actions].”
   Fausto, 484 U.S. at 448-49 (emphasis added).
            In part, the Court reasoned that if Fausto could get judicial review of
   his thirty-day suspension because he was excluded from the CSRA scheme,
   then he could also get judicial review of a ten-day suspension even though the

                                          64
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 65   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   CSRA does not provide covered employees with administrative and judicial
   review of suspensions less than fourteen days. Id. at 449-50. And if Fausto
   had such an expanded right to judicial review, the “preferred position” of
   covered employees in the statutory scheme would be turned upside down.
   Id. In a footnote, the Court clarified that this line of reasoning assumes that
   employees “who are given review rights by [the CSRA] . . . cannot expand
   these rights by resort to pre-CSRA remedies.” Id. at 450 n.3; See Graham v.
   Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 931, 934 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (Roberts, J.) (charting this logic).
          Like Fausto, the plaintiffs here would have expanded rights under the
   CSRA if they could obtain judicial review of the vaccine requirement before
   major adverse actions are taken against them. There is generally no statutory
   mechanism for judicial review of minor adverse actions. When a covered
   employee faces a proposed minor or major adverse action, the CSRA gives him
   procedural protections but no path to judicial review.           See 5 U.S.C.
   §§ 7503(b)(1)-(4), 7513(b)(1)-(4). Rather, an employee must wait until the
   agency takes a major adverse action against him before appealing to the
   MSPB and the Federal Circuit. See id. § 7513(d). Resort to judicial review
   for a minor adverse action or a proposed action would thus expand an
   employee’s right to judicial review outside the bounds of the CSRA. See
   Graham, 358 F.3d at 934 (applying this logic to hold that the CSRA precludes
   jurisdiction over “a personnel action as to which the CSRA grants no right of
   review, even for employees who are otherwise granted such rights under the
   CSRA in other circumstances”); Nyunt v. Chairman, Broadcasting Bd. of
   Governors, 589 F.3d 445, 448 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (Kavanaugh, J.) (“When
   Congress wants to preserve remedies outside the CSRA, it does so expressly;
   for example, the CSRA maintains federal employees’ rights to bring suit
   under Title VII and other anti-discrimination laws.”). The same is true
   where an employee seeks to challenge an employment policy, like the vaccine
   requirement, that permits an agency to discipline violators. See Vaccinations,

                                          65
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 66       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   Safer Fed. Workforce, https://perma.cc/G8T6-K8XN. The CSRA
   says that an employee subject to such a policy has to wait until a major
   adverse action is taken against him to get judicial review—and if the
   discipline imposed falls below threshold of a major adverse action, or is
   merely proposed, then no judicial review is available under the scheme.
           The majority argues that jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ claims is not
   precluded because while the CSRA provides the exclusive means to
   challenge “[p]ersonnel actions covered by the CSRA,” “plaintiffs are not
   challenging CSRA-covered ‘personnel actions.’”
           But the whole point of this lawsuit is to challenge CSRA-covered
   personnel actions. The first paragraph of the complaint says so. “[F]ederal
   employees” like the plaintiffs “have been put in an intolerable bind,” the
   complaint alleges: “either submit to forced vaccination pursuant to illegal
   agency requirements, or forfeit a career[.]” Consistent with this allegation,
   the plaintiffs say that they have been disciplined through formal reprimands
   and threatened with suspension and termination. They have put forward
   evidence that disciplinary actions, including minor adverse actions, have
   been taken against them for their noncompliance with the vaccine
   requirement. 8 Accordingly, while the plaintiffs allege that they “do not
   challenge any individual employment decisions,” and ask the court to hold

           8
            See, e.g., Feds for Med. Freedom v. Biden, No. 21-CV-356, Aff. of Brian Fouche ¶ 4,
   Dkt. No. 35-1, Ex. 39 (asserting that employee “received . . . notice of a 14-day unpaid
   suspension,” which is a minor adverse action under 5 U.S.C. § 7502); id., Aff. of John
   Armbrust ¶ 6, Dkt. No. 3, Ex. 15 (asserting that employee received “written letter of
   reprimand stating [that] it is [a] ‘disciplinary action’”); id., Aff. of Nevada Ryan ¶ 6, Dkt.
   No. 3, Ex. 27 (similar); id., Aff. of Michael Ball ¶ 6, Dkt. No. 3, Ex. 16 (asserting that
   employee “was disciplined in the form of a Letter of Counseling and Education”); id., Aff.
   of M. LeeAnne Rucker-Reed ¶ 6, Dkt. No. 3, Ex. 26 (asserting that employee was
   prohibited from traveling “to attend necessary training” or “to work Judicial [C]onference
   or protection details” and “was not selected for a promotion opportunity”).

                                                66
Case: 22-40043         Document: 00516687563                Page: 67        Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                            No. 22-40043

   the vaccine requirement unlawful, they also seek to enjoin the government
   “from enforcing or implementing” the vaccine requirement—which would
   keep the government from taking CSRA-covered personnel actions, like
   suspension and termination, against them.
           Indeed, this case is justiciable because it involves challenges to CSRA-
   covered personnel actions. The plaintiffs’ Article III injuries stem from
   personnel actions that they allege have been or will be taken against them
   because of their refusal to comply with the vaccine requirement. As the
   plaintiffs alleged in their complaint, “[t]he entire point of the [m]andate[] is
   to force vaccinations quickly by threatening to initiate drastic employment or
   contractual harms.” There is no mandate and no justiciable case without, in
   the plaintiffs’ words, a “sword of Damocles,” or, as the Supreme Court put
   it, “expos[ure] to the imposition of strong sanctions,” Abbot Lab’ys v.
   Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 154 (1967)—here, the personnel actions. And the
   district court found this case ripe because plaintiffs “already have received
   letters from their employer agencies suggesting that suspension or
   termination is imminent, have received letters of reprimand, or have faced
   other negative consequences.” 9 Feds for Med. Freedom, 581 F. Supp. 3d at
   832.
           The majority calls this suit a “pre-enforcement challenge” that the
   plaintiffs can bring “outside of the CSRA,” and the broader implication of
   this holding is unmistakable. This circuit’s door is now open to all pre-

           9
               The majority contends that because the plaintiffs “claim that the President’s
   vaccine requirement violates the U.S. Constitution and the APA,” the plaintiffs do not
   challenge any personnel action. But the legal arguments or causes of action by which the
   plaintiffs try to attack the personnel actions taken or proposed against them are immaterial
   to what the plaintiffs hope to get out of this suit: injunctive relief to avoid personnel actions.
   See Elgin, 567 U.S. at 8 (concluding that “the CSRA precludes district court jurisdiction
   over petitioners’ claims even though they are constitutional claims for equitable relief”).

                                                  67
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 68       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   enforcement challenges to federal employment policies. 10 Plaintiffs are
   welcome to challenge any personnel action before it takes place.
           Under the majority’s rule, Justice Thomas’s Elgin and Justice Scalia’s
   Fausto are dead letters. Elgin, who brought a constitutional challenge to a
   federal statute “bar[ring] from employment by an Executive agency anyone
   who has knowingly and willfully failed to register” for the Selective Service,
   Elgin, 567 U.S. at 7, could have forum shopped into our court if he filed when
   his removal from federal employment was ripe but had not yet taken place.
   Elgin, 567 U.S. at 7. Likewise, Fausto could have sued when the agency
   “advised [him] that it intended to dismiss him for a number of reasons.”
   Fausto, 484 U.S. at 441. 11 So the majority would let plaintiffs end run
   Supreme Court precedent.

           10
              The majority claims that the ripeness doctrine closes this loophole because “any
   suit to enjoin a personnel action before it occurs will likely be unripe.” This ignores that a
   personnel action may be certain to occur or imminent—and therefore ripe—long before
   the action is taken against an employee. See Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. 296, 300 (1998)
   (“A claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon contingent future events that may not
   occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.”).
           11
              The majority invokes two pre-Fausto cases that explicitly exercised jurisdiction
   over certain pre-enforcement challenges. See NFFE v. Weinberger, 818 F.2d 935, 940 (D.C.
   Cir. 1987); NTEU v. Devine, 733 F.2d 114, 117 n.8 (D.C. Cir. 1984). Because these cases
   were decided before both Fausto and Elgin mapped the landscape of CSRA preclusion, they
   are inapposite. In particular, Devine reasoned that just because it is true that “when a
   statute provides a detailed scheme of administrative protection for defined employment
   rights, less significant employment rights of the same sort are implicitly excluded and
   cannot form the basis for relief directly through the courts,” it does not follow that “a
   detailed scheme of administrative adjudication impliedly precludes preenforcement
   judicial review of rules.” 733 F.2d at 117 n.8. But this proposition runs headlong into the
   logic of Fausto, which I outlined in this section. As for Weinberger, there the court relied
   entirely on the premise that “civilian federal employees may seek to enjoin government
   actions that violate their constitutional rights.” 818 F.2d at 940. However, by ruling that
   covered employees’ constitutional claims had to run through the CSRA scheme, Elgin
   unsettled that assumption. As the D.C. Circuit recently recognized, this part of Weinberger

                                                68
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 69       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

           Accordingly, the only conclusion consistent with the text of the
   statute and binding Supreme Court authority is that Congress’s intent to
   preclude pre-enforcement challenges is fairly discernible in the CSRA.
                                                C.
           But our inquiry does not stop there. Jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’
   claims is only precluded if their “claims are of the type Congress intended to

   “cannot survive the Supreme Court’s subsequent decisions in Thunder Basin and Elgin.”
   Payne, 2023 WL 2576742, at *6.
            Finally, the majority cites two Supreme Court cases that adjudicated the merits of
   pre-enforcement challenges to laws and programs affecting federal employees without
   addressing CSRA preclusion. See United States v. NTEU, 513 U.S. 454 (1995); NTEU v.
   Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656 (1989). Both these cases involved constitutional claims and were
   decided before Elgin, which clarified the standard for determining whether the CSRA
   precludes constitutional claims, see 567 U.S. at 8-10, and applied the appropriate standard
   to find that Elgin’s claims were precluded, see id. at 10-16.
            For additional reasons, neither United States v. NTEU nor NTEU v. Von Raab is
   persuasive. It is unclear whether enforcement of the statute at issue in United States v.
   NTEU would have triggered CSRA review. See 513 U.S. at 460 (enforcement through civil
   penalty). And in NTEU v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, the district court did consider whether
   the CSRA precluded jurisdiction, see 649 F. Supp. 380, 384-86 (E.D. La. 1986). The district
   court’s jurisdictional holding rested on two principal grounds, one of which was abrogated
   by the CSRA amendments and the other undermined by Elgin. First, the district court
   reasoned that the challenged program, a drug-testing scheme for certain Customs Service
   employees, was a warrantless search. 649 F. Supp. at 384-85. Relying on dicta in Lucas
   that warrantless searches were not personnel actions under the CSRA, the district court
   decided that a challenge to the drug-testing scheme was not covered under the CSRA. See
   id. (discussing Lucas, 462 U.S. at 385 n.28). As I explained, supra note 5, at the time of the
   district court’s and the Supreme Court’s decisions, the CSRA had not yet been amended
   to add the “working conditions” phrase—abrogating the Lucas dicta and this part of Von
   Raab. Regardless, since the Lucas dicta was highly persuasive when Von Raab was decided,
   it is unsurprising that the Supreme Court did not take up jurisdiction sua sponte after
   neither party raised the issue. See Pet’rs’ Br., NTEU v. Von Raab, No. 86-1879, 1988 WL
   1025626; Resp’t’s Br., NTEU v. Von Raab, No. 86-1879, 1987 WL 880093. Second, like
   Weinberger, the district court relied on the idea that the plaintiffs were seeking to enjoin
   unconstitutional activity. See Von Raab, 649 F. Supp. at 385-86. But Elgin calls this theory
   into question.

                                                69
Case: 22-40043       Document: 00516687563              Page: 70       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   be reviewed within” the CSRA. Thunder Basin, 510 U.S. at 212. Three
   factors are probative of Congress’s intent: whether preclusion could
   foreclose all meaningful judicial review of the claims; whether the claims are
   collateral to the review scheme; and whether the claims are outside the
   agency’s expertise. See Thunder Basin, 510 U.S. at 212-13; Free Enter. Fund
   v. Public Co. Acct. Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 489 (2010) (cleaned up)
   (“[W]e presume that Congress does not intend to limit jurisdiction if a
   finding of preclusion could foreclose all meaningful judicial review; if the suit
   is wholly collateral to a statute’s review provisions; and if the claims are
   outside the agency’s expertise.” (cleaned up)).
           Here, preclusion would foreclose meaningful judicial review of
   plaintiffs’ pre-enforcement challenge to the requirement. So we ask whether
   Congress intended the CSRA to have that effect in this case. Since plaintiffs’
   challenge to the requirement as ultra vires sounds in separation-of-powers
   principles, I conclude, in this narrow circumstance, that this claim is not of
   the kind Congress intended to be precluded by the CSRA under Elgin and
   Fausto. 12
                                               1.
           Neither § 2302, the All Writs Act, nor the procedure for challenging
   major adverse actions provides for meaningful judicial review of plaintiffs’
   pre-enforcement challenge.

           12
              Preclusion of plaintiffs’ claim under the APA, on the other hand, does not raise
   the same constitutional concerns. After all, the APA does not apply to the President, see
   Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788, 800-01 (1992), and Congress’s potential
   withdrawal of jurisdiction over agency-by-agency implementation of the requirement does
   not raise the specter of the President altering the separation of powers or implicate a
   constitutionally necessary remedy. Moreover, for the reasons stated in the panel opinion,
   Feds for Med. Freedom, 30 F.4th at 510-12, the APA claim is not wholly collateral to the
   CSRA scheme and does not exceed the MSPB’s expertise.

                                               70
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 71       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

           I agree with the majority that plaintiffs do not have a path to
   meaningful judicial review of their separation-of-powers claim under § 2302
   or the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651. As described above, judicial review
   under § 2302 is not available unless the OSC petitions the MSPB for
   corrective action. See 5 U.S.C. §§ 1214(b)(2)(C), 1214(c), 7703(b)-(c). The
   plaintiffs would have to wait and see if the OSC filed a petition. And the OSC
   could insulate the requirement from judicial review by declining to escalate
   to the MSPB. 13
           Mandamus relief under § 1651 does not offer meaningful judicial
   review, either. While § 1651 “authorizes employment of extraordinary writs,
   it confines the authority to the issuance of process ‘in aid of’ the issuing
   court’s jurisdiction.” Clinton v. Goldsmith, 526 U.S. 529, 534 (1999) (quoting
   28 U.S.C. § 1651(a)). If the CSRA strips jurisdiction from federal courts to
   hear pre-enforcement challenges in their “arising under” jurisdiction, 28
   U.S.C. § 1331, then no jurisdiction exists for mandamus to aid. 14 And as the

           13
             The plaintiffs could seek a writ of mandamus compelling the OSC to take the
   ministerial act of investigating a complaint, but not to petition the MSPB for corrective
   action, which is within OSC’s discretion. See Carson v. U.S. Off. of Special Counsel, 633
   F.3d 487, 491-92 (6th Cir. 2011).
           14
             The prospective jurisdiction doctrine ordinarily permits an appellate court to
   issue writs that “are within its appellate jurisdiction although no appeal has been
   perfected.” FTC v. Dean Foods Co., 384 U.S. 597, 630 (1966). “Once there has been a
   proceeding of some kind instituted before an agency . . . that might lead to an appeal, it
   makes sense to speak of the matter as being within our appellate jurisdiction—however
   prospective or potential that jurisdiction might be.” In re Tennant, 359 F.3d 523, 529 (D.C.
   Cir. 2004) (Roberts, J.) (cleaned up). Arguably, in the event that a pre-enforcement
   complaint could be made with the OSC, the possibility that the OSC would petition the
   MSPB and that the MSPB would issue an appealable final order would render the case in
   the Federal Circuit’s protective jurisdiction. Cf. In re Donohoe, 311 F. App’x 357, 358-59
   (Fed. Cir. 2008) (per curiam) (concluding that the court lacked authority under the All
   Writs Act to mandamus the MSPB where the petitioner ‘did not seek remedy from [the
   MSPB] or initiate any proceeding at [the MSPB] before seeking relief from [the Federal

                                               71
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 72        Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   majority points out, there is no reason why the CSRA would strip jurisdiction
   under § 1331 but not § 1651.
           Finally, the CSRA channel for appellate review over major adverse
   actions is not meaningfully available in this case. See 5 U.S.C. §§ 7513(d),
   7703(a)(1), (b)(1)(A). The Executive Order does not require agencies to take
   major adverse actions against noncompliant employees, see Exec. Order No.
   14043, 86 Fed. Reg. at 50,990, and neither does the guidance. Instead, the
   guidance gives agencies discretion but does not explicitly require them to
   discipline employees with “a letter of reprimand, followed by a short
   suspension,” “a longer second suspension,” and “proposing removal.”
   Vaccinations, Safer Fed. Workforce; see Guidance on Enforcement of
   Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination Requirement for Federal Employees –
   Executive      Order       14043,       Off.        of      Personnel             Mgmt.
   https://chcoc.gov/sites/default/files/Enforcement-Guidance-
   FAQs_508.pdf (similar). This disciplinary policy would not necessarily
   result in a major adverse action like removal. At most, the guidance states
   that “consistency across Government in enforcement of this Government-
   wide vaccine policy is desired, and the Executive Order does not permit
   exceptions from the vaccination requirement except as required by law.”
   Vaccinations, Safer Fed. Workforce; compare Exec. Order No. 12,564,
   51 Fed. Reg. at 32,889-90 (“Agencies shall initiate action to remove from the
   service any employee who is found to use illegal drugs.” (emphasis added)).
           In theory, under the vaccination requirement and the CSRA, agencies
   could circumvent judicial review by only taking minor adverse actions against
   employees who refused vaccination. This appears to have been agency

   Circuit]”). But since the CSRA likely strips the Federal Circuit of § 1651 jurisdiction, this
   theory is a non-starter.

                                                72
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 73       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   practice. During the almost two months that passed from the start of
   enforcement to the district court’s injunction, there is no evidence that any
   agency proposed a major adverse action against any noncompliant employee.
   Had the vaccine requirement been allowed to continue, agencies could have
   continued suspending employees for fourteen-day periods without triggering
   the major adverse action process. Because the requirement’s disciplinary
   policy gives agencies discretion to evade judicial review, and because
   implementation of the policy had that effect, I conclude that CSRA
   preclusion would foreclose all meaningful review. 15
                                                2.
           The plaintiffs’ challenge to the vaccine requirement as exceeding the
   President’s statutory and constitutional authority is not the sort of claim that
   Congress intended to remove from all meaningful judicial review.
           “Congress generally does not violate Article III when it strips federal
   jurisdiction over a class of cases.” Patchak v. Zinke, 138 S. Ct. 897, 906 (2018)
   (plurality op.). But there are limits on this jurisdiction-stripping power, at
   least two of which are relevant here. “Jurisdiction-stripping statutes can
   violate other provisions of the Constitution.” Patchak, 138 S. Ct. at 906 n.3
   (plurality op.). And they can violate Article III “if they attempt to direct the

           15
              The district court found this case ripe in part because “some plaintiffs face an
   inevitable firing.” Feds for Med. Freedom, 581 F. Supp. 3d at 832. But the government letter
   upon which the district court relied imposed a fourteen-day suspension and said, “any
   further misconduct . . . will not be tolerated and may result in more severe discipline.”
   Regardless, there is daylight between when an action becomes ripe because of the threat of
   disciplinary action and when a major adverse action is sufficiently certain such that
   meaningful judicial review is not foreclosed. Of course, it will not always be the case that a
   disciplinary policy that permits but does not require major adverse actions be taken against
   employees will foreclose all meaningful review. But the language of the guidance and
   patterns of agency enforcement show that preclusion would foreclose review here.

                                                73
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 74    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   result by effectively altering legal standards that Congress is powerless to
   prescribe.” Id. (quoting Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. 212, 228 (2016)).
          These principles raise serious constitutional doubts about an
   interpretation of the CSRA that would foreclose all federal jurisdiction over
   plaintiffs’ ultra vires claim. Congress, not the President, has the power to
   define federal court jurisdiction. See U.S. Const., art. I, § 8 (giving Congress
   the power to “constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court”); id. art.
   III, § 1 (vesting the judicial power “in one supreme Court, and in such
   inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish”).
   If we read the CSRA as permitting the President to say which of his federal
   employment policies were subject to judicial review—here, by creating a
   disciplinary scheme that might never permit appeal from a personnel
   action—the statute might transfer jurisdictional control from Article I to
   Article II.
          In the usual course of administration under the CSRA, this lurking
   threat of an unconstitutional delegation never surfaces. See Gundy v. United
   States, 139 S. Ct. 2116, 2123 (2019) (Congress “may not transfer to another
   branch ‘powers which are strictly and exclusively legislative.’” (quoting
   Wayman v. Southard, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 1, 42-43 (1825)). When a covered
   employee violates an employment policy, the Executive Branch merely
   decides whether a particular infraction warrants a major adverse action or
   not. These discretionary decisions about how to punish employees are a
   lawful exercise of Executive authority “to implement and enforce” the
   CSRA. Id. Similarly, the Executive can usually decide that a particular class
   of conduct does not merit a major adverse action as punishment without
   triggering a constitutional question.
          But the threat of an unconstitutional delegation becomes material
   when the Executive uses the CSRA to decide the outcome of a separation-of-

                                           74
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 75       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   powers challenge to a federal employment policy. Whatever power the
   President has to enact those policies comes from Congressional enactments
   and the Constitution, neither of which the President can change himself. See
   Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 585 (1952). So, by
   designing an employment policy in such a way that the CSRA precludes all
   federal jurisdiction to review a separation-of-powers challenge, the President
   could nullify any limits on his powers set by Article I and Article II. 16
   Further, by doing so, he would decide the outcome of this litigation. I doubt
   that Congress, in enacting the CSRA, intended to give the President control
   of federal jurisdiction so that he might acquire powers that the plaintiffs
   contend have not been given to him by statute or the Constitution.
           In addition, if the CSRA foreclosed all meaningful review over the
   plaintiffs’ ultra vires claim, a serious constitutional question would arise
   about whether Congress had eliminated a mandatory remedy for separation-

           16
               This scenario is a variation on the puzzle that the Supreme Court solved in United
   States v. Klein, 80 U.S. 128 (1872). There, the plaintiff sought to recover the sale proceeds
   of expropriated property on behalf of an estate under a Civil War law that allowed recovery
   if the owner had “never given any aid or comfort to the present rebellion.” Bank Markazi,
   578 U.S. at 227 (cleaned up). The original estate holder had been pardoned by President
   Lincoln, and the Supreme Court had held that a Presidential pardon satisfied the loyalty
   requirement of the expropriation statute. See United States v. Padelford, 76 U.S. 531, 543
   (1870). Congress then passed a statute repudiating the Supreme Court’s decision. The
   statute said that pardons could not be used to prove loyalty, that accepting a pardon under
   certain circumstances would prove disloyalty, and that the Court of Claims and the
   Supreme Court had “to dismiss for want of jurisdiction any claim based on a pardon.”
   Bank Markazi, 578 U.S. at 227. In Klein, the Supreme Court held that this jurisdiction-
   stripping statute “passed the limit which separated the legislative from the judicial power,”
   Klein, 80 U.S. at 147, by seeking “to nullify” “Presidential pardons . . . by withdrawing
   federal-court jurisdiction,” Bank Markazi, 578 U.S. at 227 n.19. Stated in general terms,
   Congress had impermissibly “exercise[d] its authority . . . to regulate federal jurisdiction
   . . . in a way that require[d] a federal court to act unconstitutionally.” Id. (cleaned up)
   (quoting Daniel J. Meltzer, Congress, Courts, and Constitutional Remedies, 86 Geo. L.J.
   2537, 2549 (1998)).

                                                75
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 76       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   of-powers violations.         There may be some “constitutionally necessary
   remedies for the violation of constitutional rights” that Congress cannot
   preclude through jurisdiction stripping. Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Jurisdiction-
   Stripping Reconsidered, 96 Va. L. Rev. 1043, 1134 (2010). Injunctive relief
   for Executive Branch actions that exceed the President’s authority may be
   one such remedy. 17 See Am. Sch. of Magnetic Healing v. McAnnulty, 187 U.S.
   94, 108 (1902) (“The acts of all [Executive Branch] officers must be justified
   by some law, and in case an official violates the law to the injury of an
   individual the courts generally have jurisdiction to grant relief. . . . Otherwise,
   the individual is left to the absolutely uncontrolled and arbitrary action of a
   public and administrative officer, whose action is unauthorized by any law,
   and is in violation of the rights of the individual.).
           Had Congress foreclosed all meaningful judicial review over
   plaintiffs’ ultra vires claim, we would have to confront these difficult
   constitutional questions today.            But nothing in the CSRA shows that
   Congress meant to preclude federal jurisdiction to adjudicate separation-of-
   powers challenges to employment policies set by the President. An ultra vires
   claim like the plaintiffs’ is therefore within our narrow subject-matter
   jurisdiction and outside the comprehensive CSRA scheme described by the
   Supreme Court in Elgin and Fausto.
                                                III.
           Because we have jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ challenge to the
   requirement as ultra vires, we next must consider whether the district court
   abused its discretion in granting the plaintiffs’ request for a nationwide

           17
             The same might be true of individual constitutional claims. See Webster v. Doe,
   486 U.S. 592, 603 (1988) (“[S]erious constitutional question[s] . . . would arise if a federal
   statute were construed to deny any judicial forum for a colorable constitutional claim.”
   (cleaned up)).

                                                76
Case: 22-40043         Document: 00516687563              Page: 77   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

   preliminary injunction. See Atchafalaya Basinkeeper v. U.S. Army Corps of
   Eng’rs, 894 F.3d 692, 696 (5th Cir. 2018). To obtain a preliminary injunction,
   the plaintiffs must establish that they are “likely to succeed on the merits”
   and “likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief,”
   “that the balance of the equities tips in [their] favor, and that an injunction is
   in the public interest.” Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20
   (2008).
          For the reasons I offered in my motions panel dissent, see Feds for Med.
   Freedom, 25 F.4th at 356-60, reproduced in relevant part below, 18 infra
   Section III.A, the plaintiffs have not shown that they are entitled to a
   preliminary injunction, and a nationwide injunction is inappropriate.
                                                A.
          Had our court ever given it the chance, the government likely would
   have succeeded in showing that the President has authority to promulgate
   this Executive Order pertaining to the federal executive workforce.
          “Under our Constitution, the ‘executive Power’—all of it—is ‘vested
   in a President,’ who must ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”
   Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, 140 S. Ct. 2183, 2191 (2020)
   (quoting U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1; and then quoting id. § 3). The
   President’s executive power has long been understood to include “general
   administrative control of those executing the laws.” Id. at 2197-98 (quoting
   Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 163-64 (1926)). Accordingly, the
   President “has the right to prescribe the qualifications of [Executive Branch]
   employees and to attach conditions to their employment.” Friedman v.
   Schwellenbach, 159 F.2d 22, 24 (App. D.C. Cir. 1946); see also Old Dominion

          18
               I have made some edits to the text.

                                                77
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563          Page: 78   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                   No. 22-40043

   Branch No. 496, Nat’l Ass’n of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO v. Austin, 418 U.S.
   264, 273 n.5 (1974) (noting “the President’s responsibility for the efficient
   operation of the Executive Branch”); Crandon v. United States, 494 U.S. 152,
   180 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment) (describing “the
   President’s discretion-laden power” to regulate the Executive Branch under
   5 U.S.C. § 7301); NTEU v. Bush, 891 F.2d 99 (5th Cir. 1989) (upholding
   President Reagan’s executive order authorizing random drug testing of
   certain federal employees). The President, as head of the federal executive
   workforce, has authority to establish the same immunization requirement
   that many private employers imposed to ensure workplace safety and prevent
   workplace disruptions caused by COVID-19.
          The district court rejected the above argument as “a bridge too far,”
   given “the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme
   Court” in NFIB v. OSHA, 142 S. Ct. 661 (2022), and Biden v. Missouri, 142
   S. Ct. 647 (2022). However, the district court misapprehended the single,
   animating principle that all Justices embraced in these decisions. As Justice
   Gorsuch explained in his NFIB concurrence, “The central question we face
   today is: Who decides?” 142 S. Ct at 667 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). In NFIB,
   the Court stayed an immunization requirement that unelected agency
   officials imposed on private employers that do not receive federal funding,
   explaining that “[a]dministrative agencies are creatures of statute” and that
   the Occupational Safety and Health Act does not “plainly authorize[] the
   Secretary’s [immunization or testing] requirement.” 142 S. Ct. at 665.
   Comparatively, in Biden v. Missouri, which involved an immunization
   requirement that unelected agency officials imposed on the staff of healthcare
   facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, the Court concluded that
   “the Secretary’s rule falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred
   upon him.” 142 S. Ct. at 652. Notably, even the dissenting Justices in that
   case acknowledged that “[v]accine requirements . . . fall squarely within a

                                        78
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 79       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   State’s police power.” Id. at 658 (Thomas, J., dissenting); see also NFIB v.
   OSHA, 142 S. Ct at 667 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (“There is no question
   that state and local authorities possess considerable power to regulate public
   health.”). Thus, in these two cases, the Court gave a consensus answer to
   Justice Gorsuch’s question: it is elected, democratically-accountable
   officials, including members of Congress 19 and state legislators, 20 who have
   authority to decide—and answer for—the infection-fighting measures that
   they impose, including immunization requirements, such as mandatory
   smallpox vaccination, that our country has utilized for centuries.                      See
   Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) (upholding the authority of
   states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws); Austin v. U.S. Navy Seals 1-
   26, 142 S. Ct. 1301 (2022) (staying district court order preventing Navy from
   considering vaccination status in making operational decisions); Lukaszczyk
   v. Cook Cnty., 47 F.4th 587 (7th Cir. 2022) (upholding state and local vaccine

           19
              Cf. 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(1)(A)(ii) (statutory requirement that any alien “who seeks
   admission as an immigrant” must “receive[] vaccination against vaccine-preventable
   diseases,” including “mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria toxoids,
   pertussis, influenza type B and hepatitis B”).
           20
               For example, at least one state governor recently exercised his executive
   authority to permanently require COVID-19 vaccinations for certain state employees. See
   Off. of Governor Jay Inslee, State of Wash., Directive 22-13.1, COVID-19 Vaccination
   Standards for State Employees (Aug. 5, 2022). A bill has been introduced in the
   Washington House to permit reemployment for state employees who were dismissed from
   their jobs for failing to get vaccinated. H.B. 1029, 68th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023).
   Conversely, in Texas, Governor Abbot issued an executive order prohibiting Texas entities
   from requiring employees to get vaccinated and that would terminate when the Texas
   legislature passed legislation “consider[ing] this issue.” Exec. Dep’t, State of Tex., Exec.
   Order GA 40, Relating to Prohibiting Vaccine Mandates, Subject to Legislative Action
   (Oct. 11, 2021).

                                               79
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563               Page: 80        Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

   requirements), cert. denied sub nom., Troogstad v. Chicago, 143 S. Ct. 734
   (2023). 21
           The President is not an unelected administrator. He is instead the
   head of a co-equal branch of government and the most singularly accountable
   elected official in the country. This federal workplace safety order displaces
   no state police powers and coerces no private sector employers. Instead,
   consistent with his Article II duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully
   executed,” the President performed his role as CEO of the federal
   workforce, 22 taking executive action in order to keep open essential
   government buildings; 23 to maintain the provision of vital government
   services, such as the Transportation Security Administration; and to prevent
   unvaccinated federal employees from infecting co-workers or members of the
   public who, whether because of age or infirmity, might be highly vulnerable
   to hospitalization and death.

           21
              Indeed, executive immunization requirements predate the birth of this country,
   with George Washington famously requiring members of the Continental Army to be
   inoculated against smallpox. See Letter from George Washington to William Shippen, Jr.
   (Feb. 6, 1777), in 8 The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary
   War Series, 6 January 1777 - 27 March 1777, 264 (Frank E. Grizzard, Jr., ed.)
   (1998) (“Finding the small pox to be spreading much and fearing that no precaution can
   prevent it from running thro’ the whole of our Army, I have determined that the troops
   shall be inoculated.”).
           22
             Notably, in a recent survey of nearly 500 employers, the employee benefits
   consultancy Mercer “found 44% with a [vaccine] requirement currently in place and 6%
   planning to implement one, with another 9% still considering it.” Beth Umland & Mary
   Kay O’Neill, Worksite Vaccine Requirements in the Wake of the OSHA ETS (Jan. 27, 2022),
   https://www.mercer.us/our-thinking/healthcare/worksite-vaccine-requirements-in-the-
   wake-of-the-osha-ets.html.
           23
              As noted earlier, in contrast to many of the essential services and executive
   agencies that the President oversees, Article III institutions such as this court can close our
   buildings to the public.

                                                 80
Case: 22-40043    Document: 00516687563           Page: 81   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                   No. 22-40043

         Federal employees that disagree with the content of Executive Order
   14043 retain the right to claim an exemption, to leave the government’s
   employment, to collectively bargain, to challenge the order through the
   CSRA, or to challenge the order in federal court, as they have done in this
   case. Of course, any American who disagrees with the content of the order
   has the right to vote the President out of office. Relatedly, Congress
   rescinded the President’s requirement that members of the Armed Forces
   get vaccinations. See James M. Inhofe Nat’l Def. Authorization Act for
   Fiscal Year 2023, Pub. L. No. 117-263, § 525 (2022). Thus, consistent with
   NFIB v. OSHA and Biden v. Missouri, and applying the Supreme Court’s
   methodology for assessing the President’s emergency powers in the absence
   of direct Congressional intervention, see Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 635-38
   (Jackson, J., concurring in the judgment and opinion of the Court); Dames &
   Moore v. Regan, 453 U.S. 654, 669 (1981) (“[E]xecutive action in any
   particular instance falls . . . at some point along a spectrum running from
   explicit congressional authorization to explicit congressional prohibition.
   This is particularly true as respects cases . . . involving responses to
   international crises the nature of which Congress can hardly have been
   expected to anticipate in any detail.”), accountability for the federal
   executive employee immunization requirement is open, obvious, and vested
   in one elected, democratically accountable official. These cases do not cast
   doubt on, but rather determinatively confirm, the President’s emergency
   power to issue Executive Order No. 14043. Yet our court refuses to explain
   why the President does not have this power.
         In addition to the issues discussed above, the government is also likely
   to succeed in showing that the plaintiffs have not met their burden for
   obtaining a preliminary injunction. A plaintiff seeking such an injunction
   must establish, among other requirements, “that he is likely to suffer
   irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief.” Winter, 555 U.S. at

                                        81
Case: 22-40043         Document: 00516687563              Page: 82        Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                           No. 22-40043

   20. However, even if the plaintiffs were to lose their jobs as a result of this
   order, we have explained in a previous case involving “discharge under the
   federal civil service laws” that “[i]t is practically universal jurisprudence in
   labor relations in this country that there is an adequate remedy for individual
   wrongful discharge after the fact of discharge”: “reinstatement and back
   pay.” Garcia v. United States, 680 F.2d 29, 31-32 (5th Cir. 1982). The CSRA
   makes this remedy available to the plaintiffs. See 5 U.S.C. § 7118(a)(7)(C).
   Accordingly, the district court did not show that the plaintiffs are likely to
   suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief. Our court
   rubberstamps the injunction without identifying any irreparable harm, either.
          Finally, even if I were to conclude that the plaintiffs were entitled to
   injunctive relief, I agree with Judge Haynes and would not affirm the district
   court’s grant of a nationwide injunction. 24 As our court recently explained,
   nationwide injunctions “can constitute ‘rushed, high-stake, low-information
   decisions,’ while more limited equitable relief can be beneficial.” Louisiana
   v. Becerra, 20 F.4th 260, 264 (5th Cir. 2021) (quoting Dep’t of Homeland Sec.
   v. New York, 140 S. Ct. 599, 600, (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in the grant
   of a stay)); see Kentucky v. Biden, 57 F.4th 545, 556-57 (6th Cir. 2023) (finding
   district court abused its discretion in extending preliminary injunction of
   vaccine requirement for federal contracts to non-parties); see also Trump v.
   Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2425 (2018) (Thomas, J., concurring) (observing
   that nationwide injunctions “are beginning to take a toll on the federal court
   system—preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal

          24
               In this respect, I join Judge Haynes’s separate opinion.

                                                 82
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 83       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                          No. 22-40043

   courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national
   emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch”). 25
           Cognizant of the separation of powers, as well as our judicial ignorance
   of the immense task of running the Executive Branch of government, for
   which the President, informed by public health experts, is solely accountable,
   I would not allow an unelected lower court to impose its Article III fiat on
   millions of Article II employees, above all when a dozen other lower courts
   have declined to enjoin the President’s order. More egregious, our court
   should not have approved this unaccountable exercise of the judicial power
   without explaining why an injunction was warranted in the first place.
                                                B.
           In affirming the district court’s nationwide injunction, the majority
   defends the scope of the injunction but does not say why the district court
   properly exercised its discretion in granting any injunction at all. “After

           25
              The majority argues that a nationwide injunction is permissible because “any
   benefit to outside parties is ‘merely incidental.’” I fail to understand how this is so.
   Historically, courts of equity “did not provide relief beyond the parties to the case.” Trump
   v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2427 (2018) (Thomas, J., concurring). Of course, an injunction
   tailored to the parties in a case might sometimes incidentally benefit a nonparty. For
   example, “injunctions barring public nuisances” might “benefit[] third parties . . . merely
   [as] a consequence of providing relief to the plaintiff,” id., because when a source of water
   or air pollution is enjoined, everyone’s water or air gets cleaner. But a nationwide
   injunction barring the vaccine requirement is not analogous to an injunction barring a public
   nuisance. Outside parties to this case who don’t want to get vaccinated are directly shielded
   from federal government enforcement action by the nationwide injunction; they are direct
   “beneficiaries” of the relief granted to plaintiffs, even though they are not plaintiffs. In
   sum, there is no way to turn upside down Justice Thomas’s skepticism toward nationwide
   injunctions by framing this case as an exception to “historical limits on equity and judicial
   power.” Id. at 2429 (Thomas, J., concurring). Rather, by affirming the Executive Order,
   every court excepts ours has respected the President’s decision to protect federal
   employees and the public from the effects of a pandemic disease and respected the principle
   that courts do not make federal policy. See id. at 2427 (Thomas, J., concurring).

                                                83
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 84   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

   carefully considering the district court’s opinion and the Government’s
   criticisms of it, we are unpersuaded that the district court abused its
   discretion. And we need not repeat the district court’s reasoning, with which
   we substantially agree”—that’s it.         In two sentences and without any
   explanation, after more than a year of government attempts to get our court
   to engage, we limit the President’s authority to protect federal employees
   from a pandemic. Our perfunctory treatment of this important and difficult
   issue does not reflect a “[d]ue regard for the implications of the distribution
   of powers in our Constitution and for the nature of the judicial process as the
   ultimate authority in interpreting the Constitution.” Youngstown, 343 U.S.
   at 597 (Frankfurter, J., concurring). Nor does it meet our basic “obligation
   to say enough that the public can be confident that cases are decided in a
   reasoned way.” United States v. Handlon, 53 F.4th 348, 353 (5th Cir. 2022);
   see Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007).
                                        ***
          This case requires us to determine the powers of the President to
   regulate the Executive Branch workforce—in other words, “to intervene in
   determining where authority lies as between the democratic forces in our
   scheme of government.” Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 597 (Frankfurter, J.,
   concurring).    As Justice Frankfurter warned during another national
   emergency, “we should be wary and humble” in drawing those lines. Id.
   Contrary to his teachings, our court, asserting that it is right but unable to
   explain why, hastily sketches the President as a diminished figure in our
   system of government.
          I respectfully dissent.

                                         84
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563            Page: 85      Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                     No. 22-40043

   Carl E. Stewart, Circuit Judge, joined by Richman, Chief Judge, and
   Dennis and Graves, Circuit Judges, dissenting:
          Respectfully, I dissent from the en banc majority opinion because, as
   the original panel opinion held, the Civil Service Reform Act (“CSRA”), 5
   U.S.C. § 1101 et seq., precludes district court review of challenges to
   Executive Order 14043 (“the Order”). See Feds for Med. Freedom v. Biden
   (“Feds II”), 30 F.4th 503, 511 (5th Cir. 2022). As the Supreme Court
   explained in United States v. Fausto, “the CSRA comprehensively overhauled
   the civil service system, creating an elaborate new framework for evaluating
   adverse personnel actions against [federal employees].” 484 U.S. 439, 443
   (1988) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). “It prescribes in
   great detail the protections and remedies applicable to such action, including
   the availability of administrative and judicial review.” Id.
          As we explained in Feds II, “[t]he CSRA established ‘the
   comprehensive and exclusive procedures for settling work-related
   controversies between federal civil-service employees and the federal
   government.’” 30 F.4th at 506 (quoting Rollins v. Marsh, 937 F.2d 134, 139
   (5th Cir. 1991)). Prior to the enactment of the CSRA, administrative and
   judicial review under the civil service system was “haphazard,” resulting
   from the “outdated patchwork of statutes and rules built up over almost a
   century.” Fausto, 484 U.S. at 444 (quoting S. Rep. No. 95–969, at 3
   (1978)). This system drew “widespread” criticism, in part because it
   produced inconsistent judicial decisions on similar matters due to the
   “concurrent jurisdiction, under various bases of jurisdiction, of district
   courts in all Circuits and the Court of Claims.” Id. at 445. In response to these
   issues, Congress enacted the CSRA, which imposed “an integrated scheme
   of administrative and judicial review, designed to balance the legitimate
   interests of the various categories of federal employees with the needs of
   sound and efficient administration.” Id.

                                          85
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 86   Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

          The CSRA provides different procedures for employees facing
   different types of employment actions. Feds II, 30 F.4th at 507 (“The CSRA
   distinguishes between employees facing ‘proposed’ adverse action and those
   who have already suffered an adverse action[.]”). Employees facing
   “proposed” action are entitled to notice, an opportunity to respond, legal
   representation, and written reasons supporting the employing agency’s
   decision. 5 U.S.C. § 7513(b). A Merit Systems Protection Board (“MSPB”)
   appeal, however, is only guaranteed to “employee[s] against whom an action
   is taken.” Feds II, 30 F.4th at 508; § 7513(d). “If the employee prevails on
   appeal, the MSPB can order the agency to comply with its decision and award
   ‘reinstatement, backpay, and attorney’s fees.’” Id. at 507; Elgin v. Dep’t of
   Treasury, 567 U.S. 1, 6 (2012) (citing 5 U.S.C. §§ 1204(a)(2), 7701(g)). “‘An
   employee who is dissatisfied with the MSPB’s decision is entitled to judicial
   review in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’ under
   § 7703.” Id. (quoting Elgin, 567 U.S. at 6). The jurisdiction of the Federal
   Circuit over such appeals is “exclusive.” Id. (citing 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9)).
   Once an employee appeals to the Federal Circuit, that court must “review
   the record and hold unlawful and set aside any agency action, findings, or
   conclusions that are (1) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or
   otherwise not in accordance with law; (2) obtained without procedures
   required by law, rule, or regulation having been followed; or (3) unsupported
   by substantial evidence.” Id. (citing 5 U.S.C. § 7703(c)(1)–(3) (internal
   quotation marks omitted)). This remedial scheme is intricate and as the
   Supreme Court has recognized, “[g]iven the painstaking detail with which
   the CSRA sets out the method for covered employees to obtain review of
   adverse employment actions, it is fairly discernible that Congress intended to
   deny such employees an additional avenue of review in district court.” Id.
   (quoting Elgin, 567 U.S. at 11–12).

                                         86
Case: 22-40043     Document: 00516687563           Page: 87    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                    No. 22-40043

          In Elgin v. Department of Treasury, the Supreme Court addressed an
   attempt by former federal employees to “carve out an exception to CSRA
   exclusivity for facial or as-applied constitutional challenges to federal
   statutes.” 567 U.S. at 12. The Court rejected their attempt, explaining that
   the CSRA’s text and structure demonstrated that “[t]he availability of
   administrative and judicial review under the CSRA generally turns on the
   type of civil service employee and adverse employment action at issue,” not
   whether a challenged action is constitutionally authorized. Id. at 12–13. The
   Court further noted that the CSRA’s purpose, which is to create an
   integrated scheme of review, confirms that “the statutory review scheme is
   exclusive.” Id. at 13. The Court ultimately held that “the CSRA provides the
   exclusive avenue to judicial review when a qualifying employee challenges an
   adverse employment action by arguing that a federal statute is
   unconstitutional.” Id. at 5.
          Relying on this Supreme Court guidance, the Feds II panel majority
   reasoned that this case is “the vehicle by which [the plaintiffs] seek to avoid
   imminent adverse employment action” for not complying with the Order,
   “which is precisely the type of personnel action regularly adjudicated by the
   MSPB and the Federal Circuit within the CSRA scheme.” 30 F.4th at 511
   (citing Elgin, 567 U.S. at 22) (internal quotation marks omitted). The panel
   majority further determined that the plaintiffs’ claims did not exceed the
   MSPB’s expertise. Id. (citing Elgin, 567 U.S. at 22 (recognizing that “many
   threshold questions . . . may accompany a constitutional claim” and “the
   MSPB can apply its expertise” to those questions)).
          A unanimous Fourth Circuit panel agreed with our view that
   “Congress intended for the CSRA to cover [the plaintiffs’] claims” and
   “that the district court lacked jurisdiction” over a challenge to the Order. See
   Rydie v. Biden, No. 21-2359, 2022 WL 1153249, at *3 (4th Cir. Apr. 19, 2022).
   Like the Feds II panel majority, Rydie relied on Elgin to hold that “Congress

                                         87
Case: 22-40043        Document: 00516687563              Page: 88       Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                         No. 22-40043

   intended the CSRA to foreclose judicial review in at least some
   circumstances.” Id. at *4. As the Rydie panel observed, courts use the three
   Thunder Basin factors 1 to determine whether Congress intended the CSRA
   to foreclose judicial review in certain cases and concluded that the factors
   militated in favor of preclusion. Rydie, 2022 WL 1153249, at *4–7. Both the
   Feds II and Rydie decisions align with those of other courts that have
   considered challenges to the Order since April of last year. See Am. Fed’n of
   Gov’t Emps. Loc. 2018 v. Biden, 598 F. Supp. 3d 241, 248 (E.D. Pa. 2022)
   (“This action will be dismissed in its entirety for lack of subject-matter
   jurisdiction.”); Payne v. Biden, 602 F. Supp. 3d 147, 151 (D.D.C. 2022)
   (“The Court will grant the Government’s Motion because the Civil Service
   Reform Act deprives the Court of subject-matter jurisdiction over this
   workplace dispute involving a covered federal employee.”) 2; Am. Fed’n of
   Gov’t Emps. Loc. 2586 v. Biden, No. CIV-21-1130-SLP, 2022 WL 3695297, at
   *4 (W.D. Okla. July 22, 2022) (“[T]he Court finds the CSRA’s scheme is
   detailed, comprehensive and exclusive and it is fairly discernible that
   Congress intended the Civilian Employees’ claims to be encompassed within
   that scheme.”).
           Because I am not persuaded that we should create a split with the
   Fourth Circuit or depart from the sound reasoning of numerous other federal

           1
              The Thunder Basin factors are: “(1) whether a finding of preclusion could
   foreclose all meaningful judicial review; (2) whether the claims were wholly collateral to a
   statute’s review provisions; and (3) whether the claims were outside the agency’s
   expertise.” See Cochran v. SEC, 20 F.4th 194, 205 (5th Cir. 2021), cert. granted SEC v.
   Cochran, No. 21-1239, 2022 WL 1528373 (U.S. May 16, 2022) (citing Thunder Basin Coal
   Co. v. Reich, 510 U.S. 200, 207 (1994)).

           2
             The D.C. Circuit has since ruled in the Government’s favor. See Payne v. Biden, -
   -- F.4th ---, 2023 WL 2576742 (D.C. Cir. 2023).

                                               88
Case: 22-40043      Document: 00516687563            Page: 89    Date Filed: 03/23/2023

                                      No. 22-40043

   courts that have since heard similar challenges and reached the same result,
   I would affirm our original holding in Feds II that the CSRA precludes the
   district court’s jurisdiction in this case. See 30 F.4th at 511.

                                           89