NASA v. FLRA, 527 U.S. 229, 2 (1999)

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230

NASA v. FLRA

Syllabus

ment of Interior, 526 U. S. 86, 98-100. The Court rejects additional reasons that NASA and NASA-OIG advance for their narrow reading. Pp. 233-237.

(b) The IGA does not preclude, and in fact favors, treating OIG personnel as representatives of the agencies they are duty-bound to audit and investigate. The IGA created no central office or officer to supervise, direct, or coordinate the work of all OIG's and their respective staffs. Other than congressional committees and the President, each Inspector General has no supervisor other than the head of the agency of which the OIG is part. Congress certainly intended that the OIGs would enjoy a great deal of autonomy, but an OIG's investigative office, as contemplated by the IGA, is performed with regard to, and on behalf of, the particular agency in which it is stationed. See 5 U. S. C. App. §§ 2, 4(a), 6(a)(2). Any potentially divergent interests of the OIGs and their parent agencies—e. g., an OIG has authority to initiate and conduct investigations and audits without interference from the agency head, § 3(a)—do not make NASA-OIG any less a NASA representative when it investigates a NASA employee. Furthermore, not all OIG examinations subject to § 7114(a)(2)(B) will implicate an actual or apparent conflict of interest with the rest of the agency; and in many cases honest cooperation can be expected between an OIG and agency management. Pp. 237-243.

(c) NASA's and NASA-OIG's additional policy arguments against applying § 7114(a)(2)(B) to OIG investigations—that enforcing § 7114(a)(2)(B) in situations similar to this case would undermine NASA-OIG's ability to maintain the confidentiality of investigations, and that the Authority has construed § 7114(a)(2)(B) so broadly in other instances that it will impair NASA-OIG's ability to perform its responsibilities—are ultimately unpersuasive. It is presumed that Congress took account of the relevant policy concerns when it decided to enact the IGA and, on that statute's heels, § 7114(a)(2)(B). Pp. 243-245.

(d) That the investigator in this case was acting as a NASA representative for § 7114(a)(2)(B) purposes makes it appropriate to charge NASA-OIG, as well as its parent agency, with responsibility for ensuring that investigations are conducted in compliance with the FSLMRS. P. 246.

120 F. 3d 1208, affirmed.

Stevens, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O'Connor and Scalia, JJ., joined, post, p. 246.

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