Court Opinion

ID: 9474493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:58:51.752285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:07.283899
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I conclude that the Dual Compensation Act of 1964 applies to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board), and therefore I would affirm the judgment of the Claims Court.
The statutory definition of “position,” which controls the applicability of the Act to the appellants, is broad. It covers “a *1009civilian office or position (including a temporary, part-time, or intermittent position), appointive or elective, in the legislative, executive, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States____” 5 U.S.C. § 5531(2) (1964). It contains no exceptions. The framing of the coverage of the Act in terms of all positions, of whatever duration, in all three branches of the government, indicates that the Act was intended to and does havé precisely that sweeping scope. Indeed, it would be difficult to draft a broader definition.
Although the legislative history of the Act does not directly deal with the problem before us, it shows that Congress intended the statutory prohibition upon the receipt of dual compensation to have the broadest possible reach. The Senate Committee Report on the 1964 amendment stated that the Act was intended to cover “any civilian office or position in the Government of the United States.” S.Rep. No. 935, 88th Cong., 2d Sess. 4, reprinted in 1964 U.S. Code Cong. & Ad.News 2835, 2837. In Puglisi v. United States, 215 Ct.Cl. 86, 564 F.2d 403 (1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 968, 98 S.Ct. 1606, 56 L.Ed.2d 59, reh’g denied, 436 U.S. 951, 98 S.Ct. 2860, 56 L.Ed.2d 794 (1978), involving a different issue under the Act, the court stated that “[o]ne obvious purpose of the 1964 dual compensation law, as it was of the predecessor statutes, is in general to put a ceiling on the amount of compensation certain classes of individuals can receive from the federal government.” Id. at 409.
The positions with the Board, which plays a key role in the government’s regulation of the nation’s money and banking system, come within the literal language of the Act.
I do not read the parenthetical phrase in the definition “(including a Government corporation or non-appropriated fund instrumentality under the jurisdiction of the Armed Forces)” as exempting other nonappropriated fund instrumentalities from the broad reach of the definition. I think the reference to the military instrumentalities was to make explicit that the Congress was overruling two decisions of the Court of Claims holding that a predecessor statute did not cover employment of retired military officers by military facilities financed from nonappropriated funds. Gradall v. United States, 161 Ct.Cl. 714, 329 F.2d 960 (1963) (positions with Army Exchange Service and Air Force Exchange Service); Cockrill v. United States, 161 Ct.Cl. 752 (1963) (manager of golf club).
Both cases involved section 212(a) of the Economy Act of 1932, 47 Stat. 406, which limited the amount of retired pay receivable from the United States by any person “holding a civilian office or position under the United States Government ...,” and 5 U.S.C. § 150k (1952), which provided:
Civilian employees, compensated from nonappropriated funds, of the Army * * Exchange Service, * * * and other instrumentalities of the United States under the jurisdiction of the Armed Forces * * * shall not be held and considered as employees of the United States for the purpose of any laws administered by the Civil Service Commission or the provisions of the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act____
The court held that because the purpose of the Economy Act was “to curtail expenditures from appropriated funds in Government employment,” Gradall, 329 F.2d at 965, the “plaintiff’s employment in the Army Exchange Service and the Air Force Exchange Service, a Federal nonappropriated fund instrumentality, did not constitute holding a civilian office or position under the United States Government within the meaning of the dual compensation provision, section 212(a) of the Economy Act of 1932.” Id.
It reads too much into the congressional overruling of Gradall and Cockrill by making the Dual Compensation Act explicitly applicable to positions with a “nonappropriated fund instrumentality under the jurisdiction of the Armed Forces,” to conclude that Congress thereby intended to exempt from the Act employment with other entities funded by nonappropriated funds. Gradall and Cockrill held only *1010that the 1932 Act did not cover employment with the military nonappropriated agencies there involved. There is no indication that Congress viewed those cases as announcing the general rule that the Dual Compensation Act did not cover all nonappropriated fund entities, or intended to subject to the Act only military facilities. Indeed, it is most unlikely that Congress intended to apply the bar of the Dual Compensation Act to employment with ancillary military instrumentalities of the kind involved in Gradall and Cockrill but to make it inapplicable to the Board, an agency that performs far more important and far-reaching governmental functions than those instrumentalities do.