264
Opinion of the Court
Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented by this action is whether either the Due Process Clause or the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), 5 U. S. C. § 1101 et seq., precludes a federal agency from sanctioning an employee for making false statements to the agency regarding alleged employment-related misconduct on the part of the employee. We hold that they do not.
Respondents Walsh, Erickson, Kye, Barrett, Roberts, and McManus are Government employees who were the subject of adverse actions by the various agencies for which they worked. Each employee made false statements to agency investigators with respect to the misconduct with which they were charged. In each case, the agency additionally charged the false statement as a ground for adverse action, and the action taken in each was based in part on the added charge. The employees separately appealed the actions taken against them to the Merit Systems Protection Board (Board). The Board upheld that portion of the penalty based on the underlying charge in each case, but overturned the false statement charge. The Board further held that an employee's false statements could not be used for purposes of impeaching the employee's credibility, nor could they be considered in setting the appropriate punishment for the employee's underlying misconduct. Finally, the Board held that an agency may not charge an employee with failure to report an act of fraud when reporting such fraud would tend to implicate the employee in employment-related misconduct.
The Director of the Office of Personnel Management appealed each of these decisions by the Board to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In a consolidated appeal involving the cases of Walsh, Erickson, Kye, Barrett, and Roberts, that court agreed with the Board that no penalty could be based on a false denial of the underlying claim.
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007