Court Opinion

ID: 9498151
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:09:21.167708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:38.884353
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Mr. Carley was advised that if he turned down a valid offer under the Priority Placement Program (PPP), that is, an offer of a position not under study for elimination, he would lose his priority rights in the RIF. Thus he accepted the offer to work in Norfolk, having twice asked whether the position in Norfolk was under study for elimination, and being twice told that it was not and that the offer was valid. Within days after his arrival in Norfolk, he was told that the position he had accepted was in fact under study for elimination. He immediately *1359told the agency that he wished to return to Fort Knox. The record shows that the agency recognized its error and recommended this remedy, but that it was not offered. Indeed, this is the same remedy Mr. Carley even now continues to seek: a return to the PPP and RIF procedures at Fort Knox.
It is correct, as the majority states, that the agency discovered its error. The record contains a memorandum between agency personnel in the Department of Defense, proposing that the “most reasonable remedy is to re-register Mr. Carley [in a PPP].” The memorandum requires notification to the originating personnel officer when “registration has been activated”; yet no such notification is in the record, nor any indication that this (or any other) remedy was actually offered to Mr. Carley. The Board did not decide the case on this ground.
The Board decided the case on the quite different ground that since Mr. Carley had not suffered a reduction in pay, and eventually was promoted to a job at Norfolk at his original grade, he had no right to complain about the agency error that caused his dislocation from Kentucky to Virginia. On this ground the Board ruled that the case was “moot.” Yet the Board has recognized that wrongful geographic dislocation is subject to remedy. See Holtgrewe v. FDIC, 57 M.S.P.R. 307, 309-10 (1993) (return to a position at the same grade and pay at a different geographic location is not return to the status quo ante).
The uprooting of an employee from home and neighborhood and job site is not an event of insignificant human impact. When due to clear and admitted agency error, it is subject to remedy. Mr. Carley requests no more than reconstruction of the RIF list at Fort Knox with the priority of the position he held. A reconstructed RIF would determine what positions would have been available to him, and aid in fashioning a suitable remedy. A similar procedure was applied in Jordan v. Dep’t of Justice, 91 M.S.P.R. 635, 638 (2002), where the Board required the agency “to return the appellant to the eligibility list for employment.”
Since remedy was possible, the Board’s dismissal of the case as moot was not in accordance with law. See Church of Scientology v. United States, 506 U.S. 9, 13, 113 S.Ct. 447, 121 L.Ed.2d 313 (“The availability of this possible remedy is sufficient to prevent this case from being moot”). See generally 1A C.J.S. Actions § 39 (when a court can provide effective relief, when the effect of not deciding the case would be different from the relief that might be granted by ruling on it, or when a party to the action would benefit from an order that could be rendered, the case is not moot).
The government provides no excuse for the Board’s erroneous ruling of mootness, and instead raises the issue of “jurisdiction.” The panel majority, deciding that the Board did not have jurisdiction, gives Mr. Carley no opportunity to defend the Board’s jurisdiction, and declines to remand for this purpose. Appellate review of agency rulings is limited to the grounds on which the agency relied, and here the agency did not rely on jurisdiction. See Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 50, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983) (“It is well established that an agency’s action must be upheld, if at all, on the basis articulated by the agency itself”); SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 196, 67 S.Ct. 1575, 91 L.Ed. 1995 (1947) (citing SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 63 S.Ct. 454, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943)) (a reviewing court must judge a decision of an administrative agency “solely by the grounds invoked by the agency”).
*1360In SEC v. Chenery the Court ruled that “if [the agency’s] grounds are inadequate or improper, the court is powerless to affirm the administrative action by substituting what it considers to be a more adequate or proper basis.” 332 U.S. at 196, 67 S.Ct. 1575. Vacatur is required. Holderfield v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 326 F.3d 1207, 1209 (Fed.Cir.2003) (“Since the Board did not address the Vorking conditions’ definition of a personnel action, and we are not able to review its decision without its analysis, we must vacate”); Whittington v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 80 F.3d 471, 476 (Fed.Cir.1996) (because the Board “failed to make relevant factual findings or apply the appropriate statutory and regulatory law ... we can neither reverse nor affirm the Board’s decision because either action would require us to apply law the Board did not consider to facts the Board did not consider; such a complete de novo review is not our proper role”). Without more, the panel majority’s action is improper.
Although jurisdiction may be challenged at any time, an untimely challenge does not also confer authority on the appellate court to develop the arguments and bar the petitioner not only from his day in court, but also from the opportunity to establish jurisdiction. See Abbott Labs. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 140-41, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967) (the heavy weight of authority favors enabling access to the courts, not denying it). The question of jurisdiction that is now raised by the panel majority requires exploration by the Board of the complex statutes and regulations that govern RIF procedures, and should not be casually resolved to deprive the petitioner of a hearing on this threshold question. See Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833, 845, 106 S.Ct. 3245, 92 L.Ed.2d 675 (1986) (finding the agency’s expertise on an issue of its own jurisdiction “superior to that of a court”); St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 U.S. 38, 53, 56 S.Ct. 720, 80 L.Ed. 1033 (1936) (“the judicial duty is performed in the light of the proceedings already had and may be greatly facilitated by the assembling and analysis of the facts in the course of the legislative determination. Judicial judgment may be none the less appropriately independent because informed and aided by the sifting procedure of an expert legislative agency”). Federal Circuit precedent well supports remand for the purpose of establishing the facts relevant to jurisdiction, when the challenge is raised on appeal. See Holderfield v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 326 F.3d 1207, 1210 (Fed.Cir.2003) (vacating and remanding to give petitioner opportunity to satisfy Board of jurisdiction); Dumas v. Merit Sys. Prot Bd., 789 F.2d 892, 895 (Fed.Cir.1986) (same); Burgess v. Merit Sys. Prot. Bd., 758 F.2d 641, 643 (Fed.Cir.1985) (same). In Holderfield the government argued that the Board lacked jurisdiction over an Individual Right of Action appeal because the employee had failed to identify an agency action that would constitute a “personnel action” within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. § 2302(a)(2); the court held that because the Board had not considered this provision, and the court is “not able to review its decisions without its analysis,” the decision “must” be vacated and remanded for the Board to determine whether the allegations were “non-frivolous” and within the identified category, which are “determinations for the Board in the first instance.” Holderfield, 326 F.3d at 1209-10.
The panel majority acknowledges that jurisdiction may lie under 5 C.F.R. § 330.209, which provides for RIF appeal when an employee believes that his priority rights were violated by the placement of another person in a position that should have been his. Mr. Carley states that “the vast majority of employees were placed during the RIF processes at Fort Knox,” *1361whereas he was obliged, through agency-error, to relocate to Norfolk. He states that had this error not occurred, “in all probability” he would have been placed in the Fort Knox area. On its face, the criteria of § 330.209 are met, and these nonfrivolous allegations, supported by admission of agency error, establish Board jurisdiction. See Smith v. Dep’t of the Army, 97 M.S.P.R. 272, 276 (2004) (jurisdiction is established where the appellant makes a nonfrivolous allegation that the agency violated his RPL rights by employing another person during his eligibility for the RPL).
Agency precedent fully supports Mr. Carley. See Sweeney v. Dep’t of the Interior, 73 M.S.P.R. 329, 334 (1997) (remanding for determination of jurisdiction where appellant “alleged that he was separated by RIF, that there was an agencywide policy regarding reemployment priority rights and that [the agency] did not follow the policy”); Miller v. Dep’t of the Navy, 2005 MSPB LEXIS 763, at *5 (Jan. 25, 2005) (jurisdiction is established where appellant made non-frivolous allegations, which if proven would show that “he applied to the agency for RPL or PPP rights,” and that “the agency’s employment of another person deprived him of those rights”).
The majority’s ruling that the Board did not have jurisdiction of this admitted wrongful agency action is incorrect. At a minimum, the case should be remanded to the Board for review of jurisdiction, and to fashion a remedy appropriate to the agency’s conceded wrongful action.