The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has long recognized whistleblowing claims even where the employee has not made a protected disclosure, where the employee’s supervisors perceive the employee to be a whistleblower and act against them. On February 16, 2022, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected one such claim, clarifying its standard of review of MSPB decisions in the process.
The case arose when a Department of Energy (DOE) general engineer who worked in the agency’s National Nuclear Security Administration made “repeated attempts to correct what he considered a seriously erroneous agency decision related to the mission of providing space-based nuclear detection.”
The engineer was unsuccessful in convincing his chain of command that Section 1065 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2008 required DOE, rather than the Department of Defense (DOD), to maintain a Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System (SABRS) to meet the law’s requirement for maintenance of a “space-based nuclear detection at a level that meets or exceeds the level of capability” as of the date of the NDAA of 2008.
Although the law assigns the responsibility to the Secretary of Defense, the “division of labor” between DOD and DOE has been muddled “in no small part” by other provisions of the statute, including the provision that states that the law is only violated “if detection capability falls below a pre-set standard, and a National Security Council (NSC) ...
Quince is looking to sidestep a proposed class action lawsuit accusing it of “defraud[ing] customers as to the value of thousands of … products sold on its website.” In a newly filed motion to dis...