Lindahl v. Office of Personnel Management (470 U.S. 768)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 20, 1985 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 470 U.S. 768 · 105 S. Ct. 1620
- Decided
- March 20, 1985
- Term
- October Term 1984
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Brennan
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) “determine[s] questions of disability and dependency” in administering the Federal Government’s provision of annuities to retired employees and their dependents. 5 U. S. C. § 8347(c). Subject to administrative review by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), § 8347(d)(1), OPM’s “decisions . . . concerning these matters are final and conclusive and are not subject to review,” § 8347(c). This case presents two questions of substantial importance to the administration of the Government’s retirement annuity program. The first is whether § 8347(c) bars judicial review altogether of an MSPB judgment affirming the denial by OPM of a disability retirement claim, or bars review only of factual determinations while permitting review for alleged errors of law and procedure. If judicial review is available to the latter, limited extent, a second question arises: whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has jurisdiction directly to review MSPB decisions in such cases, or whether an applicant whose appeal is rejected by the MSPB must instead file a Tucker Act claim in the United States Claims Court or a United States district court, from which an appeal could then be taken to the Federal Circuit. i — i b> These questions implicate a host of overlapping statutory…
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