Court Opinion

ID: 9489578
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:19:14.362007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:36.593206
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
I
This appeal is from the MSPB’s dismissal, for lack of jurisdiction, of an Individual Right of Action appeal taken by Robert Serrao from actions of his supervisor, Josephine Moran. Her actions were asserted to be in reprisal for his disclosures of her violations of law, mismanagement, and abuses of authority. These disclosures were made in agency grievances, and also to the Special Counsel, the Inspector General, and management officials.
The only issue is jurisdiction. The Board held that if whistleblowing disclosures were made in a grievance, the Whistleblower Protection Act did not apply. The Board ignored all of Mr. Serrao’s asserted whistle-blowing disclosures outside of the grievances, and did not comment on their existence. Thus the Board held that Mr. Serrao could not take an Individual Right of Action appeal to the Board. In so holding, the Board violated and misapplied Federal Circuit precedent, as well as its own precedent. This is the jurisdictional issue on appeal.
The panel majority, however, does not review this issue. Instead, the panel majority has decided the case sua sponte on an issue that was not relied on by the Board, not argued by any party, not supported by the record, and not before us. The opinion of the administrative judge, from which this appeal is taken, did not challenge the exhaustion of remedies before the Special Counsel. Neither side appealed the issue. The Board’s brief as Respondent not only does not dispute this point, but affirmatively states that Mr. Serrao had completed this step. See Brief for Respondent Merit Systems Protection Board at 3 n. 2 (Sept. 18, 1995) (“He had previously sought corrective action from the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) as required by 5 U.S.C. § 1221. He filed his IRA appeal after the requisite 120 days had passed without action by OSC. 5 U.S.C. § 1214(a)(3)(B).”) Mr. Serrao had *1579filed two complaints with the OSC, plus supplementary communications whenever some new adverse event happened.
Indeed, the panel majority appears to have selected this ground without reference to the record, for the record supports the Board’s recognition that the requisite administrative remedies were sought and that the requisite time had elapsed. Precedent requires that appellate review of an administrative decision be on the same ground as that considered by the administrative agency. The employee must “articulate with reasonable clarity and precision [before the OSC] the basis for his request for corrective action under the WPA.” Ellison v. Merit Sys. Protection Bd., 7 F.3d 1031, 1037 (Fed.Cir.1993); accord Mintzmyer v. Department of Interior, 84 F.3d 419, 422 (Fed.Cir.1996). We require reasonable clarity to “give the Office of Special Counsel sufficient basis to pursue an investigation which might have led to corrective action.” Knollenberg v. Merit Sys. Protection Bd., 953 F.2d 623, 626 (Fed.Cir.1992). The panel majority holds that Mr. Serrao’s complaint did not clearly notify the Special Counsel of violations of § 2302(b)(8) because his complaints related only to § 2302(b)(9). However, Mr. Serrao’s Special Counsel complaints refer not only to his grievances, but directly report the asserted wrongdoing. He also directly reported to Commerce Department management “all of the things that were going on in the NYFO concerning the SAIC and her abuse of authority, etc.” Thus, as discussed more fully below, Mr. Serrao exhausted his administrative remedies and raised a jurisdictionally valid IRA appeal before the Board.
The court also holds that Mr. Serrao did not exhaust his administrative remedies in alleging reprisal as a result of Ms. Moran’s belief that he was the anonymous informant in the 1991 Inspector General investigation. However, Mr. Serrao’s March 10, 1994 complaint to the Special Counsel lists the accusations of being the informant as one of “the three stages that have taken place and why I believe there is justification to file a complaint with the OSC.” Indeed, a February 22,1995 letter from the Special Counsel indicates his understanding of Mr. Serrao’s complaint:
Mr. Serrao alleged that the agency officials took or threatened to take these actions [of reprisal] because he had filed a grievance against his supervisor, because he made disclosures of abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, and harassment, and because he was mistakenly identified as the source of a complaint to the agency’s Office of Inspector General.
The panel majority curiously considers this letter “as akin to a ‘subsequent characterization ... in [Serrao’s] appeal to the Board’ of the statements in the complaint,” and cites Ward v. Merit Systems Protection Board, 981 F.2d 521, 526 (Fed.Cir.1992). In Ward an employee was prevented from self-serving recharacterization before the Board. This has not happened here. Moreover, there exists no better measure of the clarity of Mr. Serrao’s complaint than the Special Counsel’s letter describing his understanding of the complaint. • The Special Counsel’s explanation of his contemporaneous understanding is not the same as an employee’s self-serving subsequent characterization of his complaint. The Special Counsel’s letter leaves absolutely no doubt that Mr. Serrao sought the requisite corrective action for alleged reprisals stemming from whistleblowing disclosures that were made by Mr. Serrao or believed to have been made by Mr. Serrao.
The court’s ruling is thus on an issue not relied on by the Board in its decision and not mentioned by the Board in its brief. Neither Mr. Serrao nor the Board could respond. Procedural due process requires that a party have an opportunity to respond to any new issue that the court deems dispositive, but that had been decided in the party’s favor before the agency, and not appealed. See Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 348, 96 S.Ct. 893, 909, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976) (quoting Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 171-72, 71 S.Ct. 624, 648-49, 95 L.Ed. 817 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring)) (“The essence of due process is the requirement that ‘a person in jeopardy of serious loss [be given] notice of the case against him and opportunity to meet it.’”)
*1580The panel majority’s reliance on the exhaustion issue is not in accordance with the rule, rigorously applied by this court, that issues not raised before the Board can not be raised before us. See, e.g., Frank v. Department of Transportation, 35 F.3d 1554, 1559 (Fed.Cir.1994) (“we do not consider issues that were not raised in the proceedings below”); Synan v. Merit Sys. Protection Bd., 765 F.2d 1099, 1101 (Fed.Cir.1985) (“Petitioner cannot raise before this court an issue which could have been raised below but which was not.”) This accords with the requirement of administrative law that judicial review of agency action must be on the grounds on which the agency relied. Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 463 U.S. 29, 50, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2870, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983) (“It is well established that an agency’s action must be upheld, if at all, on the basis articulated by the agency itself.”)
[A] reviewing court, in dealing with a determination or judgment which an administrative agency alone is authorized to make, must judge the propriety of such action solely by the grounds invoked by the agency. If those grounds are inadequate or improper, the court is powerless to affirm the administrative action by substituting what it considers to be a more adequate or proper basis.
Securities & Exchange Comm’n v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 196, 67 S.Ct. 1575, 1577, 91 L.Ed. 1995 (1947).
Further, the panel majority’s ruling that the ease was not properly before the Board for failure to exhaust the procedures before the Special Counsel is untenable for neither Petitioner nor Respondent appealed this aspect. They did not raise it, argue it, or even mention the relevant facts. The panel majority’s dismissal without record or argument by the parties contravenes the Court’s admonition that no litigant’s complaint should be dismissed “unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.” Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957).
II
The Board summarized the jurisdictional issue before it as follows:
In an initial decision, an administrative judge found that the Board has no jurisdiction over Mr. Serrao’s individual right of action appeal under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C. § 1221, because information disclosed in a grievance is not covered under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8). The initial decision became the final decision of the Board when neither party filed a petition for review with the full Board pursuant to 5 C.F.R. § 1210.113.
(Emphasis added). That is the issue before us.
The Board held that reprisal for the filing of grievances is not appealable as an IRA appeal under the WPA, and did not discuss Mr. Serrao’s whistleblowing either within or outside of the grievances. It is necessary to separate the statute that prohibits retaliation for the filing of grievances, 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(9), from the statute that prohibits retaliation for whistleblowing, 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8). The Board was incorrect, as a matter of law, in ruling that retaliation for protected disclosures, if made in a grievance, is excluded from the protection of the Whis-tleblower Protection Act, without considering whether the same disclosures were made to the Special Counsel and others, and without considering its own recent precedent on this issue.
The Board’s treatment of Mr. Serrao’s whistleblowing disclosures as having been made only by grievance procedure is contrary to fact. When determining jurisdiction on the pleadings, disputed facts can not be found adversely to the complainant. Ephraim v. Brown, 82 F.3d 399, 401 (Fed.Cir.1996) (“Disputed facts, unless without color of plausible basis, are resolved in favor of the petitioner for jurisdictional purposes.”)
In his grievances filed with Carl B. Ward, Chief of the Department of Commerce’s eastern regional Human Resources Division, Mr. Serrao stated, inter alia, that Ms. Moran had conducted a harassment campaign against him over a two-year period, that Ms. Moran *1581was retaliating against him because she believed that he was the anonymous informant who told the Office of Inspector General that she was given passing scores on firearms tests that she did not pass, that she misused sick leave and the telephone, and that she had obstructed justice by ordering him to close out an undercover investigation of illegal exports in retaliation for his refusal to allow her to participate. While these grievances were pending, Mr. Serrao filed with the Special Counsel a complaint of whistle-blowing reprisal, stating that Ms. Moran had acted in reprisal against him because she believed that he was the informant who blew the whistle to the Inspector General charging her with fraudulent passing of firearms tests and abuse of sick leave and the telephone. There were several exchanges with the Special Counsel, in which Mr. Serrao reported “additional acts of retaliation.”
Mr. Serrao states that the disclosures of misfeasance, illegality, and retaliation that he made to Mr. Ward in his grievance letters of March 23 and 26,1994 are protected whistle-blower activity as defined by 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8), and are not excluded from the IRA appeal process because he exercised the grievance right, protected in 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(9). He states that he made the same disclosures to the Special Counsel and others, outside of the grievance process.
Section 2302(b)(8) prohibits retaliation for whistleblowing disclosures, however they were made — including disclosures made to the Special Counsel, the Inspector General, or persons designated within the agency to receive such disclosures. This does not exclude persons designated to receive employee grievances and process them through agency management, as in the Commerce Department’s internal grievance process. In addition, reprisal for the whistleblowing disclosure that was made anonymously to the Inspector General is not insulated from scrutiny. The Board has held that an employee who did not engage in whistleblowing activity may nonetheless be covered by the Whis-tleblower Protection Act when a personnel action is taken against him in retaliation for the mistaken belief that he has engaged in whistleblowing activity. Special Counsel v. Department of the Navy, 46 M.S.P.R. 274, 278 (1990).
The Board incorrectly perceived the statute when it held that all “disclosures made within grievance proceedings are covered by 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(9) rather than § 2302(b)(8).” Section 2302(b)(9) relates to reprisal for the act of filing a grievance, and is independent of whether the grievance included protected whistleblowing disclosures. In turn, § 2302(b)(8) gives the protection of the Whistleblower Protection Act to whistle-blowing disclosures, without limiting where or how they were made. This reading gives full scope to congressional intent, and avoids the loopholes that the Board and courts have inserted into the statutes. The statutes are:
§ 2302(b) Any employee who has authority to take, direct others to take, recommend, or approve any personnel action, shall not, with respect to such authority—
* * * * * *
(8) take or fail to take, or threaten to take or fail to take, a personnel action with respect to any employee or applicant for employment because of—
(A) any disclosure of information by an employee or applicant which the employee or applicant reasonably believes evidences—
(i) a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or
(ii) gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety,
if such disclosure is not specifically prohibited by law and if such information is not specifically required by Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or the conduct of foreign affairs.
(B) any disclosure to the Special Counsel, or to the Inspector General of an agency or another employee designated by the head of the agency to receive such disclosures, of information which the employee or applicant reasonably believes evidences—
(i) a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or
*1582(ii) gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority,
or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety;
(9) take or fail to take, or threaten to take or fail to take, any personnel action against any employee or applicant for employment because of—
(A) the exercise of any appeal, complaint, or grievance right granted by any law, rule, or regulation;
(B) testifying for or otherwise lawfully assisting any individual in the exercise of any right referred to in subparagraph (A);
(C) cooperating with or disclosing information to the Inspector General of an agency, or the Special Counsel, in accordance with applicable provisions of law;....
(Emphases added).
In Ellison v. Merit Systems Protection Board, 7 F.3d 1031, 1035 (Fed.Cir.1993), this court considered a situation wherein the facts disclosed in a grievance “establish the type of fraud, waste, or abuse that the WPA was intended to reach,” and held that the protection of the WPA under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8) is not eliminated when such facts are disclosed both in a grievance and outside of the grievance process. The Board argues that Ellison is limited to situations wherein protected information is also disclosed outside of the grievance, and that Spruill v. Merit Systems Protection Board, 978 F.2d 679 (Fed.Cir.1992) requires that reprisal when a grievance is filed, whatever the information disclosed in the grievance, can not be remedied under the Whistleblower Protection Act.
In Spruill the EEOC complaint did not contain whistleblowing disclosures as defined in § 2302(b)(8); the complaint was a discrimination complaint, not a whistleblowing disclosure. 978 F.2d at 692 & n. 17. Thus the court held that Spruill’s filing of an EEOC complaint was not an act of whistleblowing, and that any retaliation for filing the complaint could be remedied in the EEOC proceeding. However, if a grievance contains a whistleblowing disclosure and reprisal ensues, the remedies accorded reprisal for whistleblowing disclosures remain available under 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8)(B). As explained in Ellison, the purpose of the WPA is to “protect[ ] federal employees who disclose government illegality, waste, and corruption ...; it was not intended to discourage employees who are subject to prohibited personnel practices from also seeking redress through other authorized means, such as a grievance process.” 7 F.3d at 1035; see also 5 U.S.C. § 1201 Notes (the purpose of the WPA is “to strengthen and improve protection for the rights of Federal employees, to prevent reprisals, and to help eliminate wrongdoing within the Government”).
The Board applied this precedent in Bump v. Department of the Interior, 64 M.S.P.R. 326 (1994). Bump was decided after Fisher v. Department of Defense, 52 M.S.P.R. 470 (1992), a case on which the panel majority today relies. In Bump the Board explained that information included in a grievance letter may also be a whistleblowing disclosure under § 2302(b)(8), and that an employee’s recourse to the agency’s grievance procedure does not remove the protection of the WPA from whistleblowing disclosures. See 64 M.S.P.R. at 332 (“The fact that the appellant filed a grievance action ... does not in and of itself disqualify him from seeking corrective action under the WPA.”)
Although the Board now argues that Bump should be limited to that case, Mr. Serrao’s case highlights the need for clarity in this law. The Board in its decision cited a large number of Board decisions earlier than Bump and inconsistent with Bump. Although the Board acknowledges that in Bump the employee made disclosures to the Special Counsel as well as by grievance, the Board does not explain why it has not followed Bump in Mr. Serrao’s case. It is essential that the Board maintain consistency in application of its own and Federal Circuit rulings, in serving the federal employees who depend on the Board for just resolution of the employment matters assigned to it.
Mr. Serrao’s disclosures on their face relate to illegality, gross mismanagement, and abuse of authority, the subject matter of *1583§ 2302(b)(8).1 The Board’s dismissal of the IRA appeal on the ground that the filing of the grievances divested the Board of jurisdiction was incorrect. Mr. Serrao’s disclosures were prima facie whistleblowing as defined in 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8), and were made in forums in addition to their inclusion in his grievances. He is entitled to a hearing on the merits of his IRA appeal.
The panel majority does not reach the merits of Mr. Serrao’s claim. It may be that his disclosures were in fact without substance, or that the disciplinary actions were in fact untainted by reprisal for whistleblow-ing. No findings on the merits were made by the Board. I would vacate the dismissal and remand to the Board for that purpose. See Barnes v. Office of Personnel Management, 980 F.2d 708, 714 (Fed.Cir.1992) (“Orn-ease law requires that the Board make specific findings of fact, and we often vacate and remand where the Board fails to do so.”)

. The Board argues otherwise on this appeal, for the first time in the proceedings.' The Board's dismissal did not mention this point. Prima fa-cie, the disclosures of obtaining false certification to carry firearms, obstructing an official investigation, and abusing sick leave, are within the statutory categories. See Horton v. Department of the Navy, 66 F.3d 279, 283 (Fed.Cir.1995) (“The statute requires only that the whistleblower had a reasonable belief that, for example, a rule or regulation had been violated, in order for the disclosure of such violations to be protected.”), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 116 S.Ct. 1271, 134 L.Ed.2d 218 (1996). Thus the jurisdictional requirement must be viewed as met, and the Board’s argument is misplaced in the context of jurisdiction.