Court Opinion

ID: 9408970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-14 15:01:17.921376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:48.073191
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-1607   Document: 32     Page: 1   Filed: 07/14/2023

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                 ______________________

                 LINDA D. GROUNDS,
                   Claimant-Appellant

                            v.

       DENIS MCDONOUGH, SECRETARY OF
              VETERANS AFFAIRS,
               Respondent-Appellee
              ______________________

                       2022-1607
                 ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for
 Veterans Claims in No. 20-3115, Judge William S. Green-
 berg.
                 ______________________

                 Decided: July 14, 2023
                 ______________________

    KENNETH M. CARPENTER, Law Offices of Carpenter
 Chartered, Topeka, KS, argued for claimant-appellant.

     AMANDA TANTUM, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil
 Division, United States Department of Justice, Washing-
 ton, DC, argued for respondent-appellee. Also represented
 by BRIAN M. BOYNTON, TARA K. HOGAN, PATRICIA M.
 MCCARTHY; JONATHAN KRISCH, Y. KEN LEE, Office of Gen-
 eral Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Af-
 fairs, Washington, DC.
                  ______________________
Case: 22-1607    Document: 32     Page: 2    Filed: 07/14/2023

 2                                   GROUNDS   v. MCDONOUGH

     Before REYNA, STOLL, and STARK, Circuit Judges.
 STARK, Circuit Judge.
     Linda D. Grounds, the widow of John D. Grounds, ap-
 peals a decision of the Court of Appeals for Veterans
 Claims (“Veterans Court”), affirming a decision of the
 Board of Veterans’ Appeals (“Board”) finding Mr. Grounds
 ineligible for veterans benefits. We affirm.
                              I
      Mr. Grounds served in the Army from May 1969 to No-
 vember 1972. In October 1972, he was charged with being
 absent without leave (“AWOL”) during the periods of April
 26 to May 31, 1972, June 13 to August 31, 1972, and Sep-
 tember 8 to October 2, 1972. To avoid a trial by court-mar-
 tial for these AWOL offenses, Mr. Grounds requested to be
 discharged from the Army “for the good of the service.” J.A.
 31-32. He explained that his military service was causing
 marital and financial problems and, if he were to remain in
 the Army, he would continue going AWOL. His command-
 ing officers recommended that Mr. Grounds’ discharge re-
 quest be granted, because any resulting punishment was
 “expected to have minimal rehabilitative effect” and would
 provide no benefit to the Army. J.A. 35. On November 1,
 1972, Mr. Grounds was discharged “[f]or the good of the
 [s]ervice” and “[u]nder conditions other than [h]onorable.”
 J.A. 36.
     In December 2013, Mr. Grounds filed an application for
 veterans benefits. In November 2014, a Veterans Affairs
 (“VA”) Regional Office (“RO”) issued a decision finding his
 multiple periods of AWOL constituted “willful and persis-
 tent misconduct,” rendering him ineligible for benefits un-
 der 38 C.F.R. § 3.12(d)(4). Mr. Grounds filed a Notice of
 Disagreement in October 2015, challenging the RO’s deci-
 sion. After Mr. Grounds passed away in June 2016, Mrs.
 Grounds was substituted for him.
Case: 22-1607     Document: 32     Page: 3    Filed: 07/14/2023

 GROUNDS   v. MCDONOUGH                                      3

     In January 2020, the Board issued a decision agreeing
 with the RO that Mr. Grounds’ multiple periods of AWOL
 constituted “a pattern of willful and persistent miscon-
 duct.” J.A. 65 (reasoning Mr. Grounds “exhibited multiple
 willful actions that led to the charges against him, includ-
 ing willfully absenting himself from his military unit with-
 out authority . . . even after receiving nonjudicial
 punishment for his first AWOL offense”). Thus, the Board
 concluded, his discharge was considered “dishonorable” for
 VA benefits purposes, rendering him ineligible for such
 benefits.
     Mrs. Grounds appealed the Board’s decision to the Vet-
 erans Court, arguing that “38 U.S.C. § 5303(a) controls as
 a matter of law and cannot be superseded by the provisions
 of 38 C.F.R. § 3.12(d)(4).” J.A. 8. Section 5303(a) provides
 that a veteran is not eligible for benefits if he was “dis-
 charge[d] or dismiss[ed] by reason of the sentence of a gen-
 eral court-martial . . . on the basis of an absence without
 authority from active duty for a continuous period of at
 least one hundred and eighty days . . . .” Relying on our
 decision in Garvey v. Wilkie, 972 F.3d 1333, 1334 (Fed. Cir.
 2020), the Veterans Court rejected Mrs. Grounds’ argu-
 ment. Instead, as the Veterans Court explained, section
 5303(a) “is not the exclusive test for benefits eligibility,”
 adding that 38 C.F.R. § 3.12(d)(4) “is consistent with, and
 authorized by,” statute. J.A. 8 (quoting Garvey, 972 F.3d
 at 1334). While Mr. Grounds’ misconduct “do[es] not con-
 stitute a statutory bar to VA benefits under section 5303,”
 nevertheless “the Board did not clearly err in finding that
 the veteran’s multiple periods of AWOL constituted a reg-
 ulatory bar to VA benefits under 38 C.F.R.
 § 3.12(d)([4]) . . . .” 1 J.A. 8-9 (emphasis added). Thus, the
 Veterans Court affirmed the Board’s decision.

     1   In some parts of its opinion, the Veterans Court re-
 fers to 38 C.F.R. § 3.12(d)(2), which pertains to “[m]utiny
Case: 22-1607     Document: 32       Page: 4   Filed: 07/14/2023

 4                                     GROUNDS   v. MCDONOUGH

    Mrs. Grounds appeals the decision of the Veterans
 Court.
                               II
      We have exclusive, but limited, jurisdiction to review
 decisions of the Veterans Court. See 38 U.S.C. § 7292(c);
 Sullivan v. McDonald, 815 F.3d 786, 788-89 (Fed. Cir.
 2016). “We may review legal questions, including the va-
 lidity of any statute or regulation or any interpretation
 thereof.” Sullivan, 815 F.3d at 788-89. Such legal deter-
 minations are reviewed de novo. See Cushman v. Shinseki,
 576 F.3d 1290, 1296 (Fed. Cir. 2009). We may not, how-
 ever, review (1) “a challenge to a factual determination” or
 (2) “a challenge to a law or regulation as applied to the facts
 of a particular case,” unless the appeal presents a constitu-
 tional issue. 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2).
                               III
     Mrs. Grounds principally argues that the Veterans
 Court misinterpreted 38 U.S.C. § 5303(a). According to
 Mrs. Grounds, section 5303(a) does not bar Mr. Grounds
 from receiving VA benefits because (1) he was never con-
 victed for any AWOL offense and (2) his AWOL periods did
 not run 180 days or longer. Thus, Mrs. Grounds argues,
 the Veterans Court’s finding that Mr. Grounds’ AWOL of-
 fenses amounted to willful and persistent misconduct un-
 der section 3.12(d)(4) is inconsistent with section 5303(a).
      We agree with Mrs. Grounds to the limited extent that
 section 5303(a) does not preclude Mr. Grounds from obtain-
 ing VA benefits. Mr. Grounds was not convicted by court
 martial – because his request to be discharged “for the good
 of the service” was granted instead – and he was not AWOL

 or spying.” These are clearly typographical errors. It is
 clear from the context that the Veterans Court is referring
 throughout to section 3.12(d)(4).
Case: 22-1607     Document: 32      Page: 5    Filed: 07/14/2023

 GROUNDS   v. MCDONOUGH                                       5

 for a continuous period of at least 180 days. Therefore, the
 statute, section 5303(a), does not prohibit Mr. Grounds
 from obtaining veterans benefits.
      But these facts do not cause us to agree with Mrs.
 Grounds that we should reverse the Veterans Court, be-
 cause section 5303(a) was not the basis for the denial of
 benefits to Mr. Grounds. Instead, the Board’s decision was
 grounded on, entirely appropriately, a regulation – specifi-
 cally, section 3.12(d)(4). As we held in Garvey, 972 F.3d at
 1334, “[s]ection 5303 . . . is not the exclusive test for bene-
 fits eligibility.” There we further held, expressly, that sec-
 tion 3.12(d)(4) is a permissible additional prohibition on
 eligibility for benefits. See id. at 1341. Mrs. Grounds does
 not challenge the validity of section 3.12(d)(4), see Appel-
 lant’s Brief at 5 (“Mrs. Grounds’s appeal is not a challenge
 to the validity of the Secretary’s regulation at 38 C.F.R.
 § 3.12(d).”); see also Oral Arg. at 13:7-14 (“I’m not challeng-
 ing the validity of the regulation.”), and we are bound to
 follow Garvey. Accordingly, the Board did not err in finding
 Mr. Grounds ineligible for benefits pursuant to section
 3.12(d)(4).
       An additional reason Mr. Grounds is not eligible is that
 he does not meet the statutory definition of “veteran” for
 benefits purposes. As we observed in Garvey, 972 F.3d at
 1334, “[a] former servicemember is ineligible for benefits
 unless he or she is a ‘veteran’ as defined in 38 U.S.C.
 § 101(2).” “To be a ‘veteran’ under section 101(2), a former
 servicemember must have been discharged ‘under condi-
 tions other than dishonorable.’” Id. (quoting 38 U.S.C.
 § 101(2)). Mr. Grounds, however, was not discharged “un-
 der conditions other than dishonorable,” because section
 3.12(d)(4) provides that “[a] discharge or release because of
 . . . [w]illful and persistent misconduct” is a discharge un-
 der “dishonorable conditions.” See also J.A. 36 (showing
 Mr. Grounds being discharged “[u]nder conditions other
 than Honorable”).
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 6                                    GROUNDS   v. MCDONOUGH

     Finally, to the extent Mrs. Grounds is challenging the
 factual basis for Mr. Grounds’ discharge – her counsel sug-
 gested at oral argument that the RO lacked a record suffi-
 cient to find that Mr. Grounds’ discharge was actually due
 to his periods of AWOL, see, e.g., Oral Arg. at 4:58-5:28 –
 we lack jurisdiction to review this factual finding. See 38
 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2); see also J.A. 8 (Veterans Court conclud-
 ing Board’s factual finding was not clearly erroneous).
                              IV
     We have considered Mrs. Grounds’ remaining argu-
 ments and find they lack merit. Accordingly, the decision
 of the Veterans Court is affirmed.
                        AFFIRMED
                            COSTS
 No costs.