Case Law Updates
The Whistleblower Protection Act (“WPA”) prohibits federal agencies from retaliating against an employee for, among other things, disclosing information reasonably believed to be evidence of a violation of any law, rule, or regulation.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act requires federal agencies to consider military services members for any advantage of employment that they would have been entitled to but for their absence for military service obligations.
On December 9, counsel for petitioner Nick Feliciano, an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration and Coast Guard reserve officer, argued before the Supreme Court that Mr. Feliciano should be entitled to differential pay that matches his federal salary while ordered to active reserve duty.
The Merit Systems Protection Board (“Board”) recently issued a precedential decision holding that an employee’s personal complaints and grievances about how an Agency treated them may constitute “nonfrivolous allegations of disclosures” of an abuse of authority.
For decades, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) applied divorce court orders granting marital share of former employees’ retirement only to their basic annuity. In 2016, OPM began to apply the share to the annuity supplement.
In a rare case, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit extended Bivens to a federal inmate’s Eighth Amendment excessive force claim against Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials.