Court Opinion

ID: 9475725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:36:36.297304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:53.820788
License: Public Domain

WALD, Chief Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I join the majority in affirming the District Court’s dismissal of Hubbard’s Privacy Act and Bivens claims, and in reversing the dismissal of his first amendment claim for equitable relief. I am very troubled, however, by the majority’s language, at 5, to the effect that the Privacy Act must be stingily construed and not given its full scope in federal personnel eases; I note as well my disagreement with the reasons given for denying Hubbard’s Bivens claims. In my view, the majority has selectively picked some language and ignored other language from the Supreme Court’s opinion in Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367, 103 S.Ct. 2404, 76 L.Ed.2d 648 (1983), and denigrated the thrust of a clear line of prior decisions in this court, in order to conclude that the threadbare remedy of petitioning the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to use its wholly discretionary power to remedy prohibited personnel practices precludes a federal employment applicant whose constitutional rights have been violated from bringing an action for damages.
I.
The majority correctly focuses on the Privacy Act’s requirement that a plaintiff demonstrate a causal link between the erroneous record complained of and his injury. I join its analysis in Part II insofar as it concludes that in this case, Hubbard has failed to demonstrate that the errors in the passover document were the cause of, rather than an attempt to rationalize, the decision not to hire him. I do not agree, however, with the majority’s suggestion that serious consideration of a Privacy Act claim in the context of a federal personnel dispute somehow creates a potential conflict with the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA). Nothing in the wording or legislative history of either Act suggests that is so. Congress recognized clearly that in both Acts, federal employees were primary beneficiaries of its actions. Decisions in this circuit since the passage of the CSRA have, moreover, without a hint of the majority’s caution, reviewed the Privacy Act claims of federal employees or applicants embroiled in personnel disputes. See, e.g., Molerio v. FBI, 749 F.2d 815, 826 (D.C.Cir. *131984) (affirming dismissal of Privacy Act § 552a(g) claim because petitioner did not “establish that the reason he was not hired was the erroneous report”); Albright v. United States, 732 F.2d 181 (D.C.Cir.1984); Borrell v. United States Int’l Communications Agency, 682 F.2d 981, 992-93 (D.C. Cir.1982) (affirming dismissal of CSRA claim for want of jurisdiction, but allowing whistleblower’s claim under § 552a(g) to go forward). The majority’s citation of Al-bright to support its proposition that the Privacy Act should not be used to review federal personnel controversies is misleading: in that case this court found only that federal employees denied promotions had failed to prove causation in their Privacy Act claim because their emotional distress was more likely due to the substantive decision not to promote them than to the videotaping of a meeting, the only Privacy Act violation alleged. The court never questioned the availability of a Privacy Act remedy, if causation could be shown. My concern, of course, is that by its dicta, the majority opinion seeks to initiate a canon of niggardliness in Privacy Act construction or even a presumption of nonapplication in employee disputes that will deprive that Act of its intended effect. I would vigorously resist either approach.
II.
In Part III of its opinion, the majority advances an interpretation of Bush v. Lucas that would foreclose a Bivens action in any situation for which the CSRA provides any kind of recourse, without regard to whether the “remedy” provided is “constitutionally adequate” to the injury received. For reasons set out in much greater detail in the majority opinion in Spagnola v. Mathis, 809 F.2d 16, issued simultaneously with this case, I disagree with that interpretation of Bush. Nonetheless, I believe, for an altogether different reason, that the dismissal of Hubbard’s Bivens claim is a correct result. Quite apart from the CSRA, we hold that Hubbard, if he proves his alleged violation, may be entitled to injunctive relief in the form of reinstatement; because that relief would be constitutionally adequate, we should hesitate to recognize a private damage remedy against Beeson.
Bush emphatically did not hold that the varying types of administrative remedies provided by the CSRA for different kinds of prohibited personnel actions, always constituted a basis for denying Bivens actions. It held rather that the Court would not imply a supplemental damage remedy when there already existed “comprehensive procedural and substantive provisions giving meaningful remedies against the United States.” Bush, 462 U.S. at 368, 103 S.Ct. at 2406. I read that language not as the majority does, as a description of the CSRA, but as a prerequisite finding that a court must make before denying Bivens relief.
The majority’s analysis rests on a single phrase in Bush, in which the Court contrasted the extensive administrative and judicial review available to the petitioner in that case, with a hypothesized “absence of any other remedy,” see maj. op. at 8. From that, the majority infers any remedy in the CSRA will constitutionally suffice. But the Court’s opinion must be read in its entirety. At various other points in the opinion it refers to the procedures to which Bush, as a discharged employee, had recourse as “meaningful,” Bush, 467 U.S. at 368, 103 S.Ct. at 2406; “constitutionally adequate,” id. at 378 n. 14, 103 S.Ct. at 2412 n. 14; and “judicially reviewable,” id. at 387, 103 S.Ct. at 2416. In this case we are dealing with an applicant for federal employment who has no remedies at all under the Act except to petition the OSC to look into his case and no statutory right to any kind of judicial review.
Unlike the majority here, but in accord with the majority in Spagnola, I read the decisions of this circuit as clearly proceeding on the premise that the limited OSC procedures available to Hubbard are not adequate for constitutional violations. See, e.g., Barnhart v. Devine, 771 F.2d 1515, 1526 (D.C.Cir.1985); Williams v. IRS, 745 *14F.2d 702, 705 (D.C.Cir.1984); Borrell v. United States Int’l Communications Agency, 682 F.2d 981, 990 (D.C.Cir.1982). One post-Bush decision is particularly instructive. In Krodel v. Young, 748 F.2d 701, 712 (D.C.Cir.1984), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 62, 88 L.Ed.2d 51 (1985), we applied Bush’s “meaningful remedies” requirement, and concluded, as the majority notes, that the administrative and judicial reviews available to Krodel were sufficient to bar a Bivens action. But, in so doing, we carefully distinguished Krodel’s situation from that governed by circuit precedent: “Krodel was thus in a different position than the appellants in [Borrell and Williams ]____ Those employees could not seek direct judicial review of a prohibited personnel practice not amounting to an adverse action; instead their only statutory remedy was an essentially discretionary and unreviewable petition to the Office of the Special Counsel.” Krodel, 748 F.2d at 712 n. 6 (citations omitted).
A recent decision of the Ninth Circuit concurs in this court's prior judgments that the limited OSC procedures do not “provide[ ] ‘meaningful remedies’ to one whose constitutional rights have been violated.” Kotarski v. Cooper, 799 F.2d 1342, 1346 (9th Cir.1986). In Kotarski, the Ninth Circuit upheld the right of a probationary federal employee to bring a Bivens action against his supervisors for alleged violations of his first amendment right of free speech:
The central features of the congressional remedial system in Bush and of the alternative Bivens remedy are the right to a forum in which to establish a constitutional violation and the right to enforce significant relief if a violation is shown. Neither feature exists for the probationary employee whose only means of seeking redress is to complain to the Special Counsel.
Id. Hubbard, like Kotarski, is entitled to meaningful protection of his constitutional rights; exclusion from all meaningful remedies under the CSRA cannot automatically result in the eradication of his constitutional rights as well.
The implications of the majority’s preclusion of a Bivens remedy for any constitutional wrong suffered by a federal employee are staggering. Its analysis would permit a federal manager to deny employment, or to harass an employee to a point short of actual demotion, solely because that manager disagreed with the target’s political viewpoints or expressions or his exercise of constitutionally-protected freedoms, without affording the injured party any recourse other than a purely discretionary and unreviewable petition to an administrative office in the personnel branch of the government. The injured applicant would never get a hearing and no Article III judge would ever see the case. Nothing in the history or language of the CSRA even remotely suggests this is what Congress meant to do.1
Hubbard’s Bivens action ultimately fails, however, because of a “special factor counselling hesitation,” Bivens, 403 U.S. 388, 396, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 2005, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971), which was not present in Bush: the availability to Hubbard of injunctive relief from the agency by way of reinstatement (or more accurately the original position he was denied). See maj. op. Part IV. Two of our sister circuit courts have held that the availability of statutorily-based injunctive relief in the form of reinstatement and back pay is a “special factor” which bars Bivens actions. Heaney v. United States, 756 F.2d 1215 (5th Cir.1985) (Veterans Administration regulations providing for injunctive relief and judicial review); Gleason v. Malcolm, 718 F.2d 1044 (11th Cir. 1983) (Administrative Procedure Act remedy including reinstatement and back pay). The availability of injunctive relief here counsels against allowing a Bivens action as well.
*15In Bush, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the CSRA was not a congressional enactment “expressly precluding]” Bivens remedies, nor was it “as completely effective as a Bivens -type action.” 462 U.S. at 373, 377, 103 S.Ct. at 2409, 2411. “In the absence of such a congressional directive, the federal courts must make the kind of remedial determination that is appropriate for a common-law tribunal, paying particular heed, however, to any special factors counselling hesitation before authorizing a new kind of federal litigation.” Id. at 378, 103 S.Ct. at 2411. After Bush, then, courts should look at pre-existing as well as CSRA remedies to see if they should preclude Bivens relief. Bush does indeed suggest that where that combination of remedies is “constitutionally adequate” the special context of federal employment relationships constitutes a special factor counselling hesitation. Id. at 378 & n. 14, 103 S.Ct. at 2411 & n. 14. Judicially imposed injunctive relief, where available, is clearly a constitutionally adequate, albeit incomplete, remedy for plaintiffs complaining that federal agencies have made hiring decisions on constitutionally impermissible grounds.2 Indeed, in Bush, the plaintiffs ultimate relief, obtainable through an administrative hearing and judicial review which the Court found to be adequate, consisted of reinstatement and back pay. Id. at 371, 103 S.Ct. at 2408.3
ORDER
PER CURIAM.
The sua sponte suggestions for en banc consideration have been circulated to the full Court. A majority of the judges of the Court in regular active service have voted in favor of the suggestions. Accordingly, it is
ORDERED, by the Court en banc, that the issue at Part II of the opinion of December 5, 1986 in Spagnola v. Mathis, 809 F.2d 16 and at Part III of the December 5, 1986 opinion in Hubbard will be considered and decided by the Court sitting en banc. It is
FURTHER ORDERED, by the Court en banc, that Part II of the December 5, 1986 opinion in Spagnola and Part III of the December 5, 1986 opinion in Hubbard be, and the same hereby are, vacated. All other parts of the opinions remain as issued on December 5, 1986.
A future order will govern further proceedings herein.

. It is important to note that although in this case injunctive relief may be available to Hubbard, in many cases, particular circumstances would foreclose that possibility, confronting petitioners with “damages or nothing." See, e.g., Spagnola, at n. 8 (citing Bivens, 403 U.S. at 410, 91 S.Ct. at 2012 (Harlan, J., concurring)).

. If Hubbard can show that the EPA’s rejection of his job application violated his first amendment rights, he is entitled to injunctive relief against the agency. That relief would include, at a minimum, reinstatement in the position he sought. See maj. op. Part IV. Whether Hubbard may also be entitled to back pay as an incident to the equitable remedy of reinstatement is a more difficult question. Compare Gleason v. Malcolm, 718 F.2d 1044, 1048 (11th Cir.1983) (federal employee is barred from bringing a Bivens action because "she could have sought equitable relief, i.e., reinstatement and back pay, pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act"); Gurmankin v. Costanzo, 626 F.2d 1115, 1122 (3d Cir.1980) ("The prayer for back pay is not a claim for damages, but is an integral part of the equitable remedy of reinstatement.”) with Hostetter v. United States, 739 F.2d 983, 985 (4th Cir.1984) (§ 702 waives sovereign immunity for reinstatement but not back pay)-

. The availability of alternate injunctive relief also distinguishes this case from Spagnola v. Mathis, 809 F.2d 16, where we hold that a Bivens action does lie against a constitutionally-violative personnel practice because of the inadequacy of the same OSC petition "remedy" involved here. Although Spagnola originally sought both injunctive relief and damages, his claim for injunctive relief became moot when the defendants ceased to be his supervisors. See Spagnola, atn. 8. The existence of injunctive relief against the agency should also calm the majority’s worries about the anomalous incentive to impose more draconian punishment that the threat of personal liability might create for federal managers, see maj. op. at 9. The number of cases where a manager will face such a threat because he has invoked a sanction that does not trigger a CSRA hearing and judicial review and is also not remediable by injunctive relief, should not be substantial. In raising the distorted incentive argument, the majority views the process totally from the manager’s perspective; it ignores totally the victim’s stake in preserving his or her constitutional rights even where their violation takes the form of initial rejection rather than firing.