Court Opinion

ID: 9450963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:01:51.251666+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:30.628901
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I join in the result reached by Judge Bazelon solely for what seem to me to be the inadequacies, in terms of procedural fairness, of the notice given to appellant of the specific elements constituting the “immoral conduct” relied upon as disqualifying him for all federal employment. The consequences of this result I take to be as follows: The District Court’s grant of summary judgment to appellees is reversed; and, in the light of the reason for this reversal, it is appropriate for a judgment to be entered which has the effect of restoring appellant to his original status, that is to say, one who has met the competitive examination requirements for certain grade levels and who, absent any further action by the Civil Service Commission to disqualify him, is eligible to be considered for employment by the employing agencies. This status obviously does not assure him of any federal employment; and the Commission is, of course, free to initiate *186such further action as it chooses to exclude him from eligibility even for consideration, subject as always to appropriate procedural standards. The substantive issues which might conceivably emerge from the record developed at such a proceeding are not presently before us, and are not now to be anticipated.
Disqualification from consideration for all federal employment is not, in my view, a status which can arbitrarily be imposed upon any citizen. I think it was arbitrary, on this record, for appellant to be disqualified for “immoral conduct” and to be told, in response to his request for a specification, only that he had engaged in “homosexual conduct.” It is true, as the dissent points out, that appellant came perilously close to abandoning this claim to lack of adequate notice, but I do not read the record as showing that this brink was ever finally crossed. The waiver is said to have occurred at the time of appellant’s, final appeal to the Commission, but, although appellant there displayed a patent preoccupation with what he conceived to be a transcending issue of principle implicit in his case, this is a common failing of litigants, especially those who are representing themselves, as was appellant at that time.
Even here, however, he reiterated his right to know exactly what he was supposed to have done which caused him to be disqualified. There are allegations embodying this issue in the complaint in the District Court; and, in the appellees’ own statement of material facts in support of their motion for summary judgment, it is averred that appellant had requested specification of his “immoral conduct” in his appeal from the Division of Adjudication and that, in his appeal to the Commission, “while not abandoning his claim that he was entitled to a resume of the adverse information * * * [he] essentially devoted his final appeal to the contention that it is error for the Commission to rule that homosexuals are unsuitable for appointment. * * * ” (Emphasis supplied.) Neither in the District Court nor in this court did appel-lees think it wise to fail to meet on the merits this procedural issue of lack of adequate notice; and counsel for appellant in this court, although apparently sharing appellant’s concern with the broader aspects of the case, remained true to his professional instincts by not submerging completely his client’s interest in having a job in the larger and more venturesome quest of a principle of general application. Alternative contentions are the familiar stuff of the law, and I am not prepared to say that this record falls outside this pattern.
Upon the assumption (which may or may not be correct) that the Executive Branch can freely dismiss employees from the federal service except as limited by express provision of statute or regulation, it is said that it must be a fortiori privileged to refuse employment to a mere applicant therefor. As does this formulation, so do I put the Constitution to one side for present purposes, not because I have ever been able to grasp the precise implications of the ancient axiom that there is no constitutional right to public employment, but because I do not read the relevant statute and regulation as contemplating the procedure followed here in disqualifying appellant. Both statute and regulation are phrased in the most general terms, and they certainly imply a wide area of discretion on the part of federal employers in choosing among applicants. But the broad letter of 5 U.S.C. § 631 is far from inconsistent with a Congressional purpose that “each candidate” who “seeks to enter” federal employment shall have a fair opportunity to assert his “fitness,” both affirmatively and by way of opportunity to know of, and to defend against asserted personal shortcomings which are officially characterized as “immoral conduct” within the meaning of regulations issued in implementation of the statute. Appellant had the one in the form of competitive examinations. But, in the other respect, the legislative purpose does not seem to me to have been adequately realized.