Court Opinion

ID: 9475837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:39:42.761127+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:58.052695
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I regret that, with all respect, I am unable to join in the court’s opinion, though I find it somewhat persuasive as to the matters it discusses. I deem it improper to render opinions that are advisory in nature, not dealing with genuine issues, but with those which are moot and fictitious.
The remarkable feature of this case is the ready acceptance the MSPB accorded to the agency assertion that the continuing resolution, H.R.J. Res. 370 hit it with an unforeseeable fiscal emergency, to which the furloughing in issue was the only possible response. The impact of H.R.J. Res. 370 on the agency’s funding was a question of law, the decision of which was crucial to the case. The absence of care with which it was actually gone into is illustrated by a fact the court points out, the MSPB’s citation of the wrong section of the resolution, one which could not possibly have caused the havoc that ensued. This acceptance of an unsupported, and probably incorrect, legal interpretation is perhaps explained by the fact that the OPM wants to use this case to obtain a holding citable in the very different situation of a total and government-wide lapse of funding, such as has several times occurred as the court points out. So the assertion there was a lapse of funding is accepted uncritically and the desired opinion is obtained. No longer is it necessary to have a true case or controversy if an appellate decision is to be obtained. A careful analysis of the impact of H.R.J. Res. 370 would have disserved, I think, the real purpose of the present appeal.
I was alerted to inquire into the true text, meaning, and effect of the Rousselot amendment by my inability to comprehend how the section of H.R.J. Res. 370 the MSPB quoted could have the effect imputed to it. Legislative historical material concerning continuing resolutions is hard to come by, as law publishers apparently fail to realize they may generate legal problems of continuing importance. With the cooperation of our fine librarian, the material was obtained and it was only necessary to arrive at a legal conclusion whether H.R.J. Res. 370 achieved a relevant cut off of funds. Because the issue was not briefed or argued, however, I think the MSPB should go into it on remand and not consider itself bound by my unaided analysis. The legal conclusions I set forth hereafter are therefore tentative.
It seems obvious to me that if prohibited work was not done, H.R.J. Res. 370 did not cut off any funds. If this is wrong, we are not shown why. The applicability or relevance of the OPM Regulation, 5 C.F.R. *578§ 752.404(d)(2), is unsupported and simply hangs in the air. If it was not applicable to the case, or relevant to the actual case, its validity is not a real issue, but a fictitious or moot one. We ought not to pass on it, notwithstanding its acceptance by our motions panel in its order of September 5, 1985, which could not have had the light we have, and necessarily accepted as correct the parties’ statements as to what the issues were. Such an order cannot be read to require decision of a moot case, yet the court seems to impute such an effect to it.
I am not persuaded that the Rousselot amendment did more than prohibit use of funds to perform certain work. If such work ceased, it said nothing as to whether or not employees who had done that work should still be paid. It looks to me as if the full sum appropriated in the continuing resolution remained available until expended for the salaries of such persons, but we have a live issue only as to the lesser amount needed' to pay salaries during the running of the 30-day notice period as Congress intended, what might be called going out of business expense. If the above is not so, we are not shown why. Therefore, the alleged fiscal emergency is a myth, and no proper ground for determining the validity of a regulation which, by its own terms, applies only in cases of emergency. My analysis of the legal issues follows in more detail.

Discussion

I
In my opinion, the first issue to attack in this case is the nature of restrictions imposed on MSHA by the Rousselot amendment as incorporated by reference in H.R.J. Res. 370. Does it prohibit, not only certain regulatory activities, but also continued pay for a 30-day notice period of those who, but for the amendment, would have been performing the prohibited activities? If it does not, it lends less or no support to the validity of the involved furloughs without pay.
It is wrong, as I will show later, to impute to Congress an intent to repudiate entitlements it has itself created unless that intent plainly appears. Some of the presiding officials were astute enough to perceive this, and examining the House Joint Resolution, failed to discover where it prohibited spending any money, within the overall statutory ceiling, for any reasonable and legally authorized purpose. If the “sudden emergency” is not the amendment, it is nothing.
That amendment, as part of H.R.J. Res. 370, is to be given the same restraining effect, and no more, as it would have had as part of H.R. 4560, had the latter been enacted into law. Its sponsors intended it to achieve no more than that, and it does not gain a different meaning by being taken from its original context and incorporated by reference elsewhere.
Mr. Rousselot, and the Congressmen who voted for his amendment, could not have intended H.R. 4560 to have any immediate effect on the legal right of the persons who had administered the program to be paid for any pay periods. First, they did not express any such intent in the amendment text or elsewhere. Second, the thrust of their effort was to adjudicate an inter-agency jurisdictional dispute, not to curtail expenditure, which curtailment, if achieved at all, was a by-product. Third, they did not make any move to adjust the $155,734,-000 agency figure downward to take advantage of any saving in payroll to result from their curtailment of the program. Fourth, they must have realized that the effect of their amendment, if it became part of a regular appropriation act such as H.R. 4560 was meant to be, would have been to precipitate moves to dismantle the agency, in whole or in part, including separation of surplus employees, for which substantial money would have been required. For one thing, employees separated without their own fault, and not placed elsewhere, would have been entitled to severance pay, usually for 6 months, a charge on the agency that had employed them. 5 U.S.C. § 5595. Others would have claimed immediate retirement on full annuity. 5 *579U.S.C. § 8336. For almost all there would be accrued annual leave.
It is a common observation that in the short run in the Federal Government, curtailment of activities with concommitant involuntary separation of employees adds to expenditure instead of reducing it. One who wrongly thought H.R.J. Res. 370 curtailed rights under 5 U.S.C. § 7513(b) would very likely have wrongly thought H.R. 4560 would have curtailed rights under the other statutes mentioned, for example, as to severance pay. I do not think any Congressman of the real world would have intended to attack vested rights in such a manner, and all to no purpose, since the rights in question could have been enforced, even in the absence of appropriation, in the then Court of Claims, and paid out of the open-ended appropriation for paying Court of Claims’ judgments. Ellis v. United States, 657 F.2d 1178, 228 Cl.Ct. 458 (1981); Collins v. United States, 15 Ct.Cl. 22, 35 (1879). The mere failure of Congress to appropriate funds, without further words modifying or repealing, expressly or by clear implication, the substantive law, does not in and of itself defeat a government obligation created by statute. New York Airways, Inc. v. United States, 369 F.2d 743, 177 Cl.Ct. 800 (1966). Pay entitlement is for the amount provided for by law, not for the amount appropriated. French v. United States, 16 Ct.Cl. 419, 422 (1880). Any intent of Congress to change a substantive obligation by a provision in an appropriation must be manifest. New York Airways, 369 F.2d at 749. An employee is not required to remain active or perform services to be entitled to active duty pay during a notice period. Oliver v. United States Postal Service, 696 F.2d 1129 (5th Cir.1983). A person’s entitlement to pay and allowances is so overriding that even a soldier rendering service to the enemy has been held entitled to his lawful pay and benefits until lawfully terminated. Bell v. United States, 366 U.S. 393, 401-02, 81 S.Ct. 1230, 1235, 6 L.Ed.2d 365 (1961).
The fact that the Rousselot amendment was made part of H.R.J. Res. 370, instead of H.R. 4560, does not, as I have shown, either loosen or further straiten its prohibitions. The affirmative action it suggests is different insofar as it might seem precipitate to dismantle the agency upon enactment, in view of the statement of the House Committee that work on the regular appropriations would continue and, as they became law, they would preempt the Continuing Resolution. Thus the discordant Senate position might prevail over the Rousselot amendment. The furlough emerges as a reasonable selection among possible actions. Nothing is added, however, to require disregard of employee’s entitlements, among which the 30-day notice of section 7513(b) clearly belongs, with pay while the notice is running. The contrary idea seems founded on the erroneous notion that it is illegal to pay employees their wages and fail to assign them work. See Oliver, 696 F.2d at 1131. If they couldn’t think of anything lawful for employees to do during a 30-day notice period, they might have sent them home on administrative leave, or kept them at their desks working crossword puzzles, in either case with pay continuing. Nothing in H.R.J. Res. 370 added a prohibition that otherwise did not exist. Any prolonged continuance of pay without work would doubtless incur criticism, and possibly impair the reputations of the officials responsible, but I cannot specify when payment would become illegal while the appropriation lasted, and the employment was not lawfully suspended, certainly not during a 30-day notice period required by law. The OPM recognizes the legal propriety of a paid, but nonduty, status during the running of a notice period in 5 C.F.R. § 752.404(b)(3)(v).
II
The agency relies, however, on another OPM regulation adjacent in the CFR to the one just cited, 5 C.F.R. § 752.404(d)(2), which is set forth above. In Hastie v. Department of Agriculture, 24 M.S.P.R. 64 (1984), the MSPB held this regulation to be totally invalid, because in conflict with section 7513(b), as did the MSPB, following Hastie, in this case. We should not affirm *580on such broad grounds. I do not know to what uses the regulation has been or will be put and they might include invoking it in instances of lapse of appropriations and Continuing Resolutions, though it may be obvious the Congress intends to fund the government and the lapse must soon be ended. That is a situation entirely unlike the one we must deal with here, one where ample appropriated funds apparently are available at least for discontinuance expenditures including employee’s pay claims. To hold the regulation wholly invalid in such a case, though no case or controversy concerning it is before us, would be an advisory opinion or else judicial legislation.
In my view, the cited OPM regulation, if valid, yet might not apply to the case before us. Clearly it was not a breakdown of equipment, and an Act of Congress is not normally considered an Act of God. What was “unforeseeable” about it? Storm clouds were visible from MSHA headquarters at least as early as House passage on October 6 of Mr. Rousselot’s amendment. Several presiding officials properly pointed this out. By the same token, what was “sudden” about it? Where was the “emergency?”
I think if a funding crisis produced by an Act of Congress is within the regulation at all, it must be one to be taken as a pro tanto repeal of section 7513(b) because it makes such an intention clear or makes that section legally or practically impossible to comply with. There is nothing to show this is such a case: the financial means of complying with section 7513(b) were apparently provided.
Ill
The Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341, as now codified, formerly section 665a, prohibits agency officials from making expenditures or incurring obligations in excess of the amounts appropriated for it, or creating contracts or obligations in anticipation of future appropriations. Officials who violate these constraints are threatened with jail terms or fines by section 1350. The agency argued it would incur section 1350 penalties if it paid furloughed employees for the 30-day notice period, but this argument is based on an interpretation of the Rousselot amendment that I reject. Funds to continue payment during the 30-day notice period were appropriated and available under H.R.J. Res. 370, so long as disapproved work was not done, as it appears to me.

Conclusion

Our review convinces me that if the MSPB was right, it was for the wrong reasons. The terms of the statute, H.R.J. Res. 370, the Continuing Resolution, cannot be read as the MSPB read them, to cut off funding to pay the respondents in question during a 30-day notice period. The opinion of the MSPB does not reflect that the board correctly identified even the portion of the Continuing Resolution that supposedly achieved such an end. Hence, its further implicit finding that “unforeseeable circumstances” existed to trigger application of the OPM Regulation, 5 C.F.R. § 752.404(d)(2), rests on an apparent misinterpretation of H.R.J. Res. 370. MSPB may have thought, however, and possibly meant to say, that a sudden and drastic reduction in workload sufficed to be “unforeseeable circumstances” under the regulation, and that according to its terms, it was irrelevant that only work was cut off, not funds.
Unless the regulation is determined to control the result if it is valid, the board cannot properly assert it is invalid, as it has done. This court should not consider the validity of the regulation when it is not satisfied that it pertains to the case.
The board does not mention the Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341, which OPM relies on; however, that Act does not have a bearing if, as it appears to me, funds to pay respondent employees had been appropriated and paying them would not produce a deficiency.
I might have come to the same conclusion as the board respecting the rights of respondent employees, but it would have been on different grounds owing to our *581different interpretation of H.R.J. Res. 370. In the circumstances, the appropriate thing to do is not to affirm, but to vacate and remand, and this I would do. I would instruct the board to take testimony by persons knowledgeable about United States Government appropriation, funding, and accounting matters, and ascertain whether the respondent employees could have been paid during the notice period, if not, why not, and if they could have been, whether any other circumstances were “unforeseeable circumstances” or an “emergency” under the regulation. The board should then determine whether the involved OPM Regulation was really relevant to the case at all, and only if it was, whether the regulation was invalid. This court should not pass upon the validity of the regulation as a whole in such an atypical context upon mere speculation that such a determination might be necessary.