Cornelius, Acting Director, Office of Personnel Management v. Nutt et al. (472 U.S. 648)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 24, 1985 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 472 U.S. 648 · 105 S. Ct. 2882
- Decided
- June 24, 1985
- Term
- October Term 1984
- Vote
- 6–2
- Majority author
- Justice Blackmun
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the Court. Under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-454, 92 Stat. 1111, a federal employee may challenge agency disciplinary action by appealing the agency’s decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board (Board). If, however, the employee is a member of a collective-bargaining unit of federal employees, he, in the alternative, may challenge the disciplinary action by pursuing any grievance and arbitration procedure provided by the collective-bargaining agreement. Neither the Board nor the arbitrator may sustain the agency’s decision if the employee “shows harmful error in the application of the agency’s procedures in arriving at such decision.” 5 U. S. C. § 7701(c)(2)(A). The Board has interpreted this statute to require the employee to show error that causes substantial prejudice to his individual rights by possibly affecting the agency’s decision. This case presents the issue whether a different “harmful-error” interpretation should apply in an arbitration, or, to phrase it another way, whether the arbitrator may overturn agency disciplinary action on the basis of a significant violation of the collective-bargaining agreement that is harmful only to the union. I The 1978 Act is “a comprehensive revision of the laws governing the rights and obligations of civil servants, [and] contains the first statutory scheme…
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