Court Opinion

ID: 9470899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:19:32.344348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:09.933202
License: Public Domain

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
I regret I cannot agree with my colleagues in this case and must file a dissent. Because oral argument was waived, disposition on the summary calendar does not require the unanimity of all members of the panel. U.S.Ct. of App., 5th Cir., Local Rule 34.3.
I cannot conclude that this employee of twenty two years with a clear prior record in his employment with the United States Postal Service, holding a responsible managerial position, must have his career destroyed by acts committed during what we must assume was a mental illness which has been cured. On this record we must accept the affidavit of Bonet’s wife that he has been totally cured or reformed, because that is the only evidence in the record on this point.
What we have here is an employee who was discharged for private illegal conduct, having no direct connection with the Postal Service. His conduct admittedly is conduct which society abhors, the sexual molestation of a step-daughter. He was not convicted in criminal court of this offense, but we must accept the fact that he committed the offense as having been proved by a preponderance of the evidence in the dismissal proceedings in the Postal Service.
The evidence in the record that his past abhorrent conduct affects the efficiency of the Postal Service consists of a number of affidavits of fellow employees and supervisors who state in effect that they would feel squeamish working alongside him knowing of his past conduct. I accept those affidavits at face value, although I must comment it is very difficult for an employee not to give such an affidavit when confronted with a superior who indicates that he or she is trying to build a case against an employee for this particular kind of misconduct. So also it should be recognized that *218the union was successful in obtaining a number of countering affidavits.
The critical point in this case, however, is Bonet’s total reform which we must accept on the record. If we allow the kind of evidence that these affidavits present to establish a nexus between private serious illegal conduct and impact upon the Postal Service, it means we sanction fellow employees justifying the discharge of, or refusal to hire, any obviously reformed malefactor or a totally cured former mental patient who committed an offense in the past. On the basis of this record I cannot escape the conclusion that the tension the other employees indicate they would feel working around this employee is based upon what they personally might feel to be particularly abhorrent conduct. Yet a drunk driver who caused the death of a child in an automobile accident, although never convicted and now a totally reformed person who never touches alcohol, would be subject to the same kind of “veto power” by the other employees stating they would feel tension or be squeamish to have him working alongside. What my brothers are sanctioning in this case is a fellow employee veto over the total reform or the total recovery of someone who has committed an offense in the past. I cannot read the statute or the regulations as sanctioning such a veto.
There is a proper kind of evidence in a case of this nature to establish the connection required by law. For example, if there were evidence that appellant was not wholly reformed or that reform was in question, that would be a different case. So also would evidence that the prior indictment itself brought the Postal Service into public disrepute. Wathen v. United States, 527 F.2d 1191,1199 (U.S.Ct.Cl.1976). If the evidence showed an employee’s absence for treatment of a mental disorder actually placed an additional burden on other employees, the nexus with the work would be established, Sherman v. Alexander, 684 F.2d 464, 469 (7th Cir.1982), so also if off-duty conduct was combined with on-the-job harassment of other employees by the disciplined employee. Ibid.
It is wholly unacceptable to me to conclude, as my brothers do conclude, that total reform or mental cure has no relationship to an objective standard connecting the Postal Service with an otherwise unconnected matter of improper personal conduct. It is also contrary to the regulations which provide that one of the factors to be taken into account is the reform of the individual.
The uncontested affidavit establishing appellant’s reform or cure was made by appellant’s wife at approximately the same time as the affidavits of the other employees. The case for discharge presented to the Merit Systems Review Board for decision, therefore, included an uncontested showing that Bonet was totally reformed or cured. Reform or cure is inescapably relevant to the objective substantial evidence determination as to whether “the ‘adverse effect on efficiency’ impact was of the kind ‘reasonably to be expected’ ”.
The evidence does not meet the objective standard required by the law to justify discharge of appellant on the facts and circumstances of this case.