Court Opinion

ID: 9466135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:06:45.713235+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:34.246030
License: Public Domain

ROBB, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
For several reasons I cannot join in the court’s opinion.
*1292I do not agree that the Appeals Review Board failed to apply the correct standard in determining the validity of McClelland’s reassignment. The Board said:
Accordingly, the sole issue for the Board’s determination is whether the appellee’s reassignment would serve the best interests of the service. [Emphasis added] In other words, the Board must determine whether the reassignment now at issue . was supported by substantial evidence and not arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable. And, in the Board’s view a reassignment is arbitrary and capricious only where it is not supportable on any rational basis. [Emphasis in original]
(J.A. 70)
In conclusion the Board said:
[T]he Board finds that the appellee’s reassignment to the Midwest Regional Office, Omaha, Nebraska, was not arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable, but for such cause as would serve the best interests of the Service. [Emphasis added]
(J.A. 72)
As I read this language the Board found that there was substantial evidence to support the conclusion that McClelland’s reassignment served the best interests of the service. In the absence of such evidence, said the Board, the reassignment would be “arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable.” I think the Board’s standard was correct.
Although the majority does not pass on the merits of McClelland’s appeal the tone of the opinion strongly indicates a belief that his reassignment was unjust and invalid. I cannot join in this belief. There is substantial evidence of a number of valid reasons for McClelland’s reassignment: a reduction in force in Glacier National Park and a reduced need for McClelland’s services there, the need for his services to prepare environmental impact statements at Omaha, and personal and official hostility and disagreements between him and Superintendent Briggle. The National Park Service thought that for these reasons the reassignment was justified, in the best interests of the Service. We should not substitute our judgment for that of the Service; it is not our business to run the National Park Service.
I cannot subscribe to the majority’s treatment of McClelland’s demand for the Mangers-Rumberg Report. I would remand the case to the District Court with directions to examine the Mangers-Rumbert Report in camera, to make available to McClelland those portions of the Report, if any, to which he is entitled under Rule 26 Fed.R. Civ.P., and to determine whether failure to make this material available to him deprived him of due process in the Civil Service proceedings.
McClelland’s long and detailed complaint filed in the District Court is in two counts. Among other things the first count alleges that McClelland was deprived of due process by the refusal of the Civil Service Commission to make available to him the Mangers-Rumberg Report. The second count demands the production of this Report pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. The case was presented to the district judge in the framework of the issues drawn by these allegations. This being so it was the duty of the district judge to determine whether as a litigant in the District Court on the first count McClelland was entitled to the production of the Report. Specifically, the question was whether the allegations of the first count justified production pursuant to Rule 26 Fed.R.Civ.P. and whether the allegations of the second count required production under the Freedom of Information Act.
Putting aside questions arising under the Freedom of Information Act, I think the allegations of the first count required the District Court to examine the Report in camera. Having done this the District Court could have identified the portions of the Report, if any, to which McClelland as a litigant under the first count, alleging a denial of due process, was entitled under the standards of Rule 26 Fed.R.Civ.P.; and those portions could have been made available to McClelland. The court could then have ruled advisedly on McClelland’s allegation that refusal of the agency to produce the Report deprived him of due process.
*1293Responding to McClelland’s demand for the Mangers-Rumberg Report the Civil Service Appeals Examiner ruled that he had no subpoena power to compel production of the Report. (Tr. 344) In this he was correct. 5 C.F.R. § 772.307(c)(2).1 As I read the majority opinion however it would graft on to the Civil Service Regulations the provisions of Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This I think we have no right to do. Those rules govern the action in the District Court. They do not apply to proceedings before the Civil Service Commission and I cannot concur in the majority’s attempt to mix them with the Civil Service Rules.

. Under the Civil Service rules McClelland might have demanded the appearance of Mangers and Rumberg, the authors of the Report, as witnesses at the hearing; 5 C.F.R. § 772.-307(c)(2), but he did not do so.