Full Federal Circuit Grapples With Right to Review VA Manual

The full Federal Circuit posed tough questions for the Department of Veterans Affairs and a veterans group fighting over the court’s ability to consider pre-enforcement challenges to agency interpretive rules at oral argument Thursday.

The National Organization of Veterans’ Advocates Inc. asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to overturn a 2017 precedential decision in which it said it lacks jurisdiction to review interpretive rules in the VA’s internally binding administrative staff manual.

“The VA wants to block the court from even looking at these rules,” Roman Martinez of Latham & Watkins LLP argued for NOVA. The ...