Should You File an Appeal with the MSPB?
The Federal Merit Systems Protection Board, or MSPB, is an independent federal agency designed to provide federal employees an opportunity to appeal adverse and unfair personnel decisions. The MSPB has the legal jurisdiction to hear and decide matters related to prohibited personnel practices (e.g. firing of an employee for whistleblowing activity), adverse agency actions (e.g. unfair removals, suspensions, reductions in pay or grade or extended furloughs), retirement matters, and discrimination.
Specifically, under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulation provision contained in section 1201.3 of Title 5, cases within the Board’s appellate jurisdiction include:
- Removals or termination of the employment relationship for cause
- Suspensions of more than 14 days
- Reductions in grade or pay
- Furloughs of 30 days or less
- Performance-based removals or reductions in grade
- Denials of within-grade salary increases
- Reduction-in-force actions
- Final administrative actions or decisions affecting an individual’s rights or interests under the Civil Service Retirement System or the Federal Employees’ Retirement System
- Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employment practices
- OPM suitability determinations or suitability determinations by other agencies when that authority has been delegated by OPM denials of restoration or reemployment rights
- Terminations of probationary employees under certain circumstances
Generally, the MSPB has appellate jurisdiction over employees who are in competitive service and have completed their probationary period and employees who are in the excepted service who have completed two years of continuous employment. This means that some political appointees are not covered by the MSPB. This also means that probationary employees have very limited rights to appeal to the MSPB and usually may only do so when employment is terminated based on factors such as political affiliation or marital status. Employees of certain intelligence agencies may also have limited rights to appeal because MSPB decisions are public and national security issues may be exposed.
In order to determine whether or not you may have a valid MSPB case, we suggest you contact anMSPB Lawyer for an initial consultation.