Court Opinion

ID: 9479049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:06:40.350365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:47.557082
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
joined by LAY, Chief Judge, HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge, and WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
Is it willful disobedience of the law to rely on a reported opinion of a United States District Court, merely because an administrative agency thinks the Court was wrong? This Court today answers that question in the affirmative. I respectfully dissent.
There is little to add to my opinion dissenting from the decision of the panel. State of Minnesota, Department of Jobs and Training v. Merit Systems Protection Board, 858 F.2d 433, 437 (8th Cir.1988). I am willing to assume for present purposes that Johnson v. Cushing, 483 F.Supp. 608 (D.Minn.1980), the opinion on which Mr. *185Kehoe relied when he ran for office while on leave of absence, was incorrectly decided. I assume, in other words, that the Merit Systems Protection Board is correct in insisting that the Hatch Act applies to employees on leave of absence, and the District Court in the present ease, and this Court, both of which agree with the Board on that point, are also correct. But that is not the question before us. We must decide whether the Board acted reasonably in labeling Mr. Kehoe’s reliance on Johnson a willful violation of law. With all deference to the Board and to this Court, I am at a loss to understand how anyone can take that position.
Perhaps the case would be clarified if we remind ourselves that the focus is not on the legal question — what does the Hatch Act mean? — but rather on a moral question • —what was Mr. Kehoe’s state of mind when he decided to obtain a leave of absence to run for the Legislature? He knew that the Board disagreed with Johnson, and disagreed strongly. But surely a court decision on an issue of statutory interpretation must have at least equal dignity with the view of an administrative agency. (Indeed, since courts review agencies, and not the other way around, one might think (and I do think) that courts’ decisions have greater dignity.)
So what was there about this particular court decision that made reliance on it unreasonable? The Court says Johnson was an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, not an action for review of a Board decision. It also was an opinion denying a motion for summary judgment and not, as the Court puts it, “a final dispositive order.” Ante, at 183. But why do these circumstances matter? The answer is that they do not. The basis of the Johnson court’s jurisdiction is not relevant. It undeniably .had jurisdiction, the Hatch Act question was squarely raised by the motion for summary judgment filed by the defendant, the same state agency involved in the present case, and the Court decided the point without equivocation. As to the finality of the order, of course it was nonfinal. Orders denying motions for summary judgment do not end cases. Would the matter come out differently if the Johnson court had been granting the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, instead of denying the defendant’s motion? Either way, an authoritative ruling on the meaning of the Hatch Act is made. The Court today also says that the Johnson court’s ruling was “without explanation,” ante at 183. This is true, but so what? Are we to hold that the quality of a written opinion governs the extent to which members of the public may rely on decisions of federal courts?
So I come back to the starting point. Mr. Kehoe had before him a federal court opinion in his favor, not contradicted by the opinion of any other federal court in the country, and an administrative-agency opinion, or series of opinions, against him. He had the permission of his employer, which evidently considered itself bound by Johnson, even though it knew the Merit Systems Protection Board disagreed with Johnson. Wherein was his behavior willful? He certainly willfully violated the view of the Board, as the letter quoted by the Court, ante at 183, shows. But the Board is not the law, and a deliberate defiance of the Board’s opinion is not the same thing as a willful violation of the Hatch Act.
Apparently the crux of this Court’s reasoning is the holding of the Supreme Court in United States v. Mendoza, 464 U.S. 154, 104 S.Ct. 568, 78 L.Ed.2d 379 (1984), holding that the United States (and, by extension, I suppose, agencies like the Merit Systems Protection Board) is not subject to nonmutual collateral estoppel. In the present context, Mendoza means this: the fact that the Johnson court rejected the Board’s view of the Hatch Act does not mean that the Board is estopped to assert its view in this case, where a different state employee is the opposing party. But no one has ever asserted such an estoppel. If Mr. Kehoe were claiming that Johnson was correctly decided, and if the Board had been a party to Johnson,1 and if Mr. Kehoe *186were arguing that the Johnson opinion precluded the Board from asserting its view of the Hatch Act in this case, Mendoza would stand squarely against him, and he would lose his collateral-estoppel argument hands down. But he isn’t claiming any of those things. He is willing to assume, for present purposes, that the Board is right on the law. His point is simply that in 1984 it was reasonable (or non-willful, which may be an easier standard to meet) for him to think otherwise. So Mendoza has nothing to do with this case.
Because Mr. Kehoe relied on a federal court rather than an administrative agency, and because this Court holds, after the fact, that the agency is right on the law, Mr. Kehoe will lose his job as a willful violator of the law.2 I think this is unjust, and I dissent. I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.

. The Court quite rightly points out that the Board was not a party in Johnson. This proves *186only that Johnson has no preclusive effect on the question of the interpretation of the Hatch Act — a point I cheerfully concede. The Court also says the Board "had no opportunity to litigate the Hatch Act issue in [Johnson]," ante at 184. If it matters, this is not necessarily true. I know of no reason why the Board could not have intervened in Johnson.

. There may be some uncertainty about this sanction, but, as the Court says, ante at 182, the Board ordered Kehoe removed from his position, and this Court is now reinstating the Board’s order. If, as the Court suggests, ante at 184 n. 4, the Board decides to impose a monetary penalty on the state, instead of requiring that it fire Kehoe, a result will occur which is, if anything, even more unfair than a sanction resting solely on the employee. As noted in text, the Merit Systems Protection Board is certainly not bound by Johnson, but the state agency which employs Mr. Kehoe, just as certainly, is bound by Johnson. It was a party to that case, and it was told by the United States District Court to do exactly what this Court is now saying may subject it to a money penalty.