The US Supreme Court agreed to consider whether it’s permissible to waive the deadline for asking an appellate court to review a decision by the board that deals with federal employment claims.
The case granted on Friday involving the Merit Systems Protection Board is the latest attempt to sort out when statutory rules are flexible or when they must be strictly followed.
Defense Department employee Stuart Harrow was furloughed in 2013, but it took until 2022 to hear his appeal because the board lacked a quorum to act for several years during that stretch.
Harrow never received notice of the decision, which went against him, because he failed to let the board know that his email address had changed.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied hearing Harrow’s petition for review of the board’s decision because he missed the 60-day deadline for filing it.
Harrow asked the Supreme Court to categorize the 60-day deadline a “claims processing rule” that can be waived for fairness concerns, and not a “jurisdictional rule” which is inflexible.
The case is Harrow v. Department of Defense, U.S., No. 23-21.
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